Backend / Infrastructure Engineer
First seen by Alion on Nov 12, 2026.
Uptown Moose • Chicago (Remote from North Macedonia)
Backend & Infrastructure Engineer (Go / Linux / Private Cloud) ~120,000 MKD Net / Month (2,200,000 MKD Gross / Year) Full-time • На неопределено време Core Hours: 06:30–15:30 UTCAbout Us
Uptown Moose is a small, founder-run VoIP operator and telecom compliance software and consulting firm, based in Chicago. We have a purpose built infrastructure: a private cloud (XCP+Nomad), a fleet of Go microservices, with fully programmable telephony (Freeswitch+Go) on top.
We’re currently hiring our first engineer. Our team is small and profitable. We automate and operationalize relentlessly, which is why there aren't a lot of meetings and there is no bureaucracy.
The Role
You will be responsible for the day-to-day engineering and operations of a production telecom platform, working directly with the founder. This is as much a backend-and-infrastructure role, as an application-developer role.
What the work looks like:- Build and maintain Go microservices backed by PostgreSQL: new features, bug fixes, performance work, schema changes
- Run the private cloud: Xen hypervisors, Nomad scheduling, networking, storage, backups, monitoring, upgrades. (Mostly this means build the automations; tweak them as they need to evolve).
- Keep the platform up: on-call during your working hours, incident response, post-incident fixes
- Drive development and operations with AI tooling as the default way of working (more on this below)
- Make architecture calls with the founder, and write down why
- Work with our compliance lead to turn regulatory requirements into working software; translating between those two worlds is part of the job
What We're Looking For
We want a builder who is comfortable being the only engineer in the room most days. Depth in one or two of the areas below plus curiosity about the rest beats a long list of checkboxes.
Must have:- Several years (4+ is a fair guide) building and running backend services in production, with real ownership of uptime
- Strong Go, or strong in a comparable language (Rust, C, Java, Elixir) and willing to go deep on Go quickly
- Solid PostgreSQL: schema design, query performance, migrations, backups and restores
- Real Linux operations: you have tracked down what was wrong with a misbehaving box when it mattered, and know your way around systemd, networking, storage and logs
- Can reason about distributed systems: failure modes, consistency, back-pressure, idempotency
- Already use AI coding and ops tooling daily and have opinions about what it does well and badly
- Clear written and spoken English; you'll be explaining decisions and trade-offs to the (technical) founder and to our (non-technical) compliance lead
- Xen, KVM or another hypervisor; Nomad, Kubernetes or another scheduler
- Telecom or VoIP: SIP, RTP, open source tools like OpenSIPS or Freeswitch
- Networking beyond the basics: BGP, VLANs, firewalls
- Observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki or similar)
- Experience at a small company
Not required: a big-company CV, a computer science degree, or leetcode. We care that you can ship, keep things running, and explain your decisions.
How We Work
AI does the typing; people do the thinking. We expect you to be the deep thinker, the designer and the approver. Leave the toil to the AI agents, and we expect you to work that way from day one. Your job is to decide what to build, specify it precisely, review what comes back with a critical eye, and own the result in production. If you would rather hand-write everything, this is not the right place. In fact, you’ll be thinking about the risks of AI development and how we manage them with better tooling.
Remote from North Macedonia. Core hours 06:30-15:30 UTC (Local hours shift winter/summer). Chicago is seven hours behind, so the founder's morning overlaps your afternoon; two to three hours of overlap a day is enough. Occasional calls outside that window for incidents or releases, not as a routine.
Small team, real responsibility. There is no one to escalate to except the founder. You will be trusted with production access and the judgment that goes with it.
Steady, not frantic. We run a telecom; reliability matters more than velocity. We would rather ship something boring that works. We keep lots of things going at once, but we keep things pretty chill.
Compensation and Terms
- Salary: MKD 2,200,000 per year gross; roughly MKD 120,000 per month net. Paid monthly in MKD.
- Contract: Full-time, indefinite employment contract (На неопределено време) under Macedonian labour law, through an employer-of-record. Payroll, contributions and health insurance are handled locally; you work day to day with us.
- Time off: 20 days paid leave plus Macedonian public holidays.
- Flexibility: Hours within the core window are generally flexible for appointments and family life.
How to Apply
Don’t bother with a cover letter. We don’t generally read them.
Do please make sure to answer the three questions. We do read these. Short, honest answers; we don’t need polish; and please don’t ask AI for help. (Really. We want to hear from you, not Claude).