Senior Backend Engineer

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer based in Netherlands.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design, build, ship, and own critical product features used by thousands of developers and hundreds of millions of end users. You will work on high-scale backend systems where performance, reliability, and correctness are essential. This is a hands-on individual contributor role for an engineer who combines strong technical fundamentals with genuine product thinking. You will take ownership across the full lifecycle, from problem discovery and scoping through production rollout, monitoring, and long-term maintenance. You will collaborate closely with Product and engineering teams in a remote-first environment built around autonomy and clear communication. Your work will directly influence customer-facing products operating at significant scale.

Accountabilities

• Design, build, test, deploy, monitor, and maintain scalable backend systems and end-to-end product features.
• Own projects from problem definition and technical scoping through implementation, production rollout, and long-term maintenance.
• Partner closely with Product and engineering teams to identify customer needs, prioritize opportunities, and translate them into effective technical solutions.
• Build performant and highly reliable systems capable of operating at significant scale.
• Write high-quality, well-tested, maintainable code and uphold strong standards for engineering quality.
• Work extensively with advanced SQL and relational databases to support robust application functionality and data-intensive workloads.
• Quickly understand unfamiliar codebases and improve existing systems, even when you were not the original author.
• Monitor production systems, feature adoption, performance, and reliability, using data and customer feedback to guide improvements.
• Debug issues methodically and contribute to incident response, reliability initiatives, and long-term preventative solutions.
• Participate in code reviews, technical proposals, architecture discussions, and engineering quality initiatives.
• Contribute to team roadmaps and technical direction, helping shape not only how solutions are built but why they should be built.
• Communicate effectively with colleagues and customers in both synchronous and asynchronous environments.
• Engage directly with customers or support teams to understand how systems are used and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Participate in an on-call rotation and help maintain reliable production services.
• Mentor other engineers and contribute to raising the overall engineering bar through feedback and knowledge sharing.
• Identify problems proactively, propose improvements, and drive initiatives through to completion.
• Use AI-assisted development tools such as Copilot, Cursor, or Claude Code to accelerate development while carefully reviewing and validating generated code.

Requirements:

• 8+ years of professional backend engineering experience, with a proven track record of designing and operating complex, high-scale production systems.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals and experience building systems that are performant, reliable, scalable, and maintainable.
• Advanced SQL skills that go well beyond basic SELECT and UPDATE queries.
• Strong experience with relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL or comparable technologies.
• Professional experience with Python is highly desirable.
• Experience designing and working with APIs, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and production services.
• Demonstrated experience delivering meaningful user-facing features to production and continuously improving them based on usage, adoption, and customer feedback.
• Strong product mindset, with the ability to understand customer problems, scope solutions, prioritize effectively, and make pragmatic technical trade-offs.
• Ability to balance a high standard of engineering quality with a strong bias toward shipping valuable solutions quickly.
• Experience taking ownership of projects without relying on detailed specifications or step-by-step implementation plans.
• Ability to navigate and improve unfamiliar codebases efficiently.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a methodical approach to debugging complex production issues.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly within a distributed and asynchronous working environment.
• Strong sense of ownership, initiative, and accountability, with a proactive approach to identifying and solving problems.
• Experience with code reviews, technical mentorship, architecture discussions, and engineering best practices.
• Comfortable working alongside AI-assisted coding tools and capable of identifying inaccuracies or inappropriate generated solutions.
• Experience building SDKs is a plus.
• Experience developing or shipping a mobile application with in-app purchases is advantageous.
• Some experience with React and single-page applications (SPAs) is beneficial.

Benefits:

• Competitive equity package in a fast-growing, venture-backed technology company.
• 10-year window to exercise vested equity options.
• Fully remote working environment designed around autonomy, flexibility, and trust.
• 4-5 weeks of flexible time off annually.
• Paid desk at a coworking space.
• Dedicated workspace budget to support an effective remote setup.
• Continuous learning and professional development stipend.
• Opportunity to work on systems operating at significant global scale.
• High degree of ownership over product initiatives, technical decisions, and long-term improvements.
• Collaborative environment focused on customer obsession, continuous delivery, engineering excellence, and pragmatic decision-making.
• Opportunities to become a technical owner for key systems and contribute to broader architectural and technical direction.
• Exposure to modern cloud infrastructure, large-scale backend engineering, developer tooling, and AI-assisted software development.
• Fully distributed collaboration that values strong written communication and asynchronous work.