Principal Backend Engineer – Architect Track

Novakid Inc

Principal Backend Engineer overseeing backend architecture for an online AI-driven education platform. Responsible for major technical decisions and evolving the backend architecture from a monolith to a modular system.

Posted 5/7/2026full-timeRemote • 🇷🇸 SerbiaLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDistributed SystemsGoogle Cloud PlatformPostgresPythonRedis

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Take ownership of backend architecture as a hands-on technical leader
Spend half your time in the code — reference implementations, critical components, refactors
Make deliberate architectural choices about how the backend should evolve
Answer architectural questions: how to evolve the monolith, set service boundaries, design for geo-distribution, and integrate AI without accumulating debt
Set backend architecture standards and make major technical decisions across teams
Guide the path from monolith toward a more modular, service-oriented backend
Develop service blueprints: API conventions, EDA patterns, testing, observability, deployment
Design cloud architecture across AWS and GCP, including multi-region and geo-distributed designs
Manage high-load, real-time systems: live class infrastructure, latency budgets, caching, capacity
Determine the best approach between buy, build, or assemble — balancing managed service use, no-code tools, or POCs

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of backend engineering, deeply hands-on in Python
Production experience with FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery, Postgres, Redis
Strong AWS architecture experience (EKS, Lambda, RDS, SQS/SNS/EventBridge, and so on); working knowledge of GCP a plus
Experience designing high-load, latency-sensitive, and geo-distributed systems
Pragmatic judgment on buy vs. build vs. assemble — managed services, no-code, and agentic tooling as first-class options, not shortcuts
A deliberate working style: you research, weigh tradeoffs, document decisions, and explain them clearly to engineers and non-engineers alike
Nice to have LLM integrations in production (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI) — evaluation, cost, reliability
Active use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor) as part of how you ship

Benefits

Comp & perks

Fully remote work (core hours GMT+3)
A chance to shape the future of AI-driven education
A fun, dynamic team that loves building innovative products
Unlimited holidays – because we trust you to deliver
Bonuses and stock options – we grow together

ATS Keywords

✓ Tailor your resume

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

PythonFastAPISQLAlchemyCeleryPostgresRedisAWSGCPhigh-load systemsgeo-distributed systems

Soft Skills

technical leadershippragmatic judgmentdeliberate working styleclear communicationdecision documentation