Senior Backend Engineer 2

HeyMarvin is one of the fastest-growing research platforms in the galaxy. Some of the largest companies (such as Microsoft, Best Buy, LinkedIn, Sonos, and 7-11) use HeyMarvin as their secret weapon for building customer-centric solutions.

We are looking for an experienced Backend Engineer to join a fast-growing, well-funded Silicon Valley–based startup. This role offers a high level of ownership, autonomy, and the opportunity to work in a collaborative, high-performance environment with competitive compensation.

• →Design, develop and deploy backend services with a focus on high availability, low latency and scalability
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  • →Architect Distributed Systems: Design and implement robust microservices using Golang and Django that can handle concurrent processing of high-volume research data (e.g., video, audio, and large-scale text datasets).
  • →Optimize AI Workflows: Build and refine asynchronous task queues (using tools like Celery or Redis) to manage long-running AI inference tasks without impacting the responsiveness of the user-facing API.
  • →Database Performance: Design and maintain efficient schemas for both relational databases (PostgreSQL) and specialized storage (Vector databases for AI search), ensuring millisecond-level query performance as data scales into the millions of records.
  • →Load Management: Implement caching strategies and rate-limiting to protect service integrity during traffic spikes from global enterprise customers.
• →Build and operate infrastructure, toolset and deployment pipelines
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  • →Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Own and automate the provisioning of cloud resources on AWS (using Terraform or CloudFormation) to ensure environments are reproducible and scalable.
  • →CI/CD Optimization: Streamline the path from "code commit" to "production" by building automated testing and deployment pipelines that allow the team to ship multiple times a day with high confidence.
  • →Observability & Monitoring: Implement comprehensive logging, tracing, and alerting (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog) to proactively identify performance bottlenecks and system health issues before they affect users.
  • →Developer Experience: Create internal CLI tools or scripts to simplify the local development environment and improve the velocity of the entire engineering team.
• →Collaborate with other engineers to create beautiful products
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  • →API Stewardship: Design clean, well-documented, and intuitive RESTful or GraphQL APIs that enable frontend teams to build seamless and high-performance user interfaces.
  • →Full-Stack Synergy: Work closely with product designers and frontend engineers to understand the "Jobs to be Done," ensuring that backend logic perfectly supports complex research workflows.
  • →Technical Mentorship: Participate in rigorous code reviews and architectural whiteboarding sessions, fostering a culture of high-quality code and continuous learning.
  • →Rapid Prototyping: Transition quickly from experimental AI features to production-ready services, balancing speed-to-market with long-term code maintainability.
• →Handling and owning security and compliance aspects for the software that the team produces.
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  • →Enterprise-Grade Compliance: Build and enforce the technical controls necessary to maintain SOC2, GDPR, or HIPAA compliance, ensuring customer data is treated with the highest level of privacy.
  • →Data Isolation: Implement strict multi-tenant architecture patterns to ensure that sensitive research insights from one organization (e.g., Microsoft) are never accessible or leaked to another (e.g., 7-11).
  • →Proactive Security: Conduct regular vulnerability scanning, dependency audits, and security reviews of the codebase to defend against OWASP Top 10 threats.
  • →IAM & Encryption: Manage complex Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and ensure all sensitive data is encrypted both at rest and in transit.

• 4-6 years of experience in backend engineering
• Strong skills in:
• • Python (Django)
  • Golang
  • Problem-solving and debugging
  • API development and database management

• Familiarity with DevOps practices (Docker, AWS, CI/CD)
• Experience building scalable and distributed systems
• Strong ownership mindset with the ability to work independently
• Practical, solution-oriented thinker comfortable in fast-paced, low-process environments

You’ll be joining a lean, high-performing team that values ownership, speed, and thoughtful execution. The team operates with minimal bureaucracy and emphasizes collaboration, continuous learning, and delivering meaningful outcomes.