{"id":2798700,"url":"https://alion.io/job/novakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2","title":"Principal Backend Engineer (Architect Track) - Remote","company":{"id":678723,"name":"Novakid","domain":"novakidschool.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/novakidschool","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Recruitee","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":62,"open_postings":19,"ghost_share":0.632,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-21T05:46:15Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":{"label":"UTC+3","utc_offset_min":3,"utc_offset_max":3},"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Belgrade, Serbia"],"countries":["RS"],"hiring_countries":["RS"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":42000,"max_usd":126000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":2085},"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon EKS","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon EventBridge","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"AWS Lambda","optional":false},{"name":"Celery","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"n8n","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Redis","optional":false},{"name":"SQLAlchemy","optional":false},{"name":"Anthropic","optional":true},{"name":"Google GKE","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-04T16:38:57Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-04","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T18:57:32Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":170,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":169},"description":"Novakid is an online English platform for kids - 100,000+ students, 2,500+ teachers, 15+ countries. Live classes run around the clock across time zones, which sets the technical bar: low latency, high availability, and a backend that holds up at real scale.\nWe’ve built a working platform. The next chapter is making deliberate architectural choices about how it should evolve.\nThe role\nWe’re hiring a Principal Backend Engineer to take ownership of backend architecture as a hands-on technical leader. No direct reports. About half your time is in the code - reference implementations, critical components, refactors. The other half is the harder work: deciding what to build, what to buy, what to defer, and why.\nOur backend today is a Python core (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery, Postgres, Redis), surrounded by services and event-driven flows, with a growing AI layer. It runs primarily on AWS, with GCP for data and AI workloads. There are real architectural questions to answer: how to evolve the monolith, how to set service boundaries, how to design for geo-distribution as we grow, and how to integrate AI without accumulating debt. We’re looking for someone who treats those questions seriously - researches before deciding, thinks in tradeoffs, writes things down.\nWhat you’ll work on\nBackend architecture standards and major technical decisions across teams\n\nThe path from monolith toward a more modular, service-oriented backend\n\nService blueprints: API conventions, EDA patterns, testing, observability, deployment\n\nCloud architecture across AWS (primary) and GCP, including multi-region and geo-distributed designs\n\nHigh-load, real-time systems: live class infrastructure, latency budgets, caching, capacity\n\nBuy vs. build vs. assemble - knowing when a managed service, a no-code tool (Retool, n8n), or an agentic-coding POC (Claude Code, Cursor) is the right call, and when it isn’t\n\nProduction code: components, refactors, POCs, and selected product-critical features\n\nRequirements\nWhat we’re looking for\n7+ years of backend engineering, deeply hands-on in Python\n\nProduction experience with FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery, Postgres, Redis\n\nStrong AWS architecture experience (EKS, Lambda, RDS, SQS/SNS/EventBridge, and so on); working knowledge of GCP a plus\n\nExperience designing high-load, latency-sensitive, and geo-distributed systems\n\nPragmatic judgment on buy vs. build vs. assemble - managed services, no-code, and agentic tooling as first-class options, not shortcuts\n\nA deliberate working style: you research, weigh tradeoffs, document decisions, and explain them clearly to engineers and non-engineers alike\n\nNice to have\nLLM integrations in production (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI) - evaluation, cost, reliability\n\nActive use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor) as part of how you ship\n\nEdTech or other high-scale consumer platforms\n\nStack\nPython · FastAPI · SQLAlchemy · Celery · Postgres · Redis · Kubernetes (EKS, GKE) · AWS · GCP · SQS/SNS/EventBridge · Pub/Sub · OpenAI · Anthropic · Google AI\nWhat we offer…\nFully remote work (core hours GMT+3).\n\nA chance to shape the future of AI-driven education.\n\nA fun, dynamic team that loves building innovative products.Unlimited holidays - because we trust you to deliver.\n\nBonuses and stock options - we grow together.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3301,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Serbia","iso":"RS","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Language Learning","E-learning"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-18T01:36:16Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.3,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":169,"expected_fill_days":39,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","velocity","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-21T05:46:15Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/novakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/novakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-21T21:07:41Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":30019,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":678723},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=678723"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fnovakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fnovakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fnovakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/novakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fnovakid-principal-backend-engineer-architect-track-remote-2"}]}