Backend Engineer

Backend Engineer – SDE 2

Company: BLKBOX.ai

Location: Remote

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience: 3–5 Years

Role: Backend Engineer – SDE 2

About BLKBOX.ai BLKBOX.ai is a technology-driven company building innovative products and solutions across AI, automation, data, and digital experiences. We are looking for a strong Backend Engineer – SDE 2 who can take ownership of backend services and features, build scalable and reliable distributed systems, and work closely with the engineering team to deliver high-quality solutions.

Role Overview As a Backend Engineer – SDE 2, you will design, build, and maintain backend services and REST APIs in Node.js and Python that power BLKBOX.ai's products. You will own features end-to-end — from requirements and technical design through implementation, testing, deployment, and production support — and contribute to architecture decisions for the services you own. This role involves working with distributed, horizontally-scaled systems, PostgreSQL-backed data models, and AWS infrastructure, and is ideal for an engineer who is technically strong, detail-oriented, and comfortable owning services end-to-end in a fast-paced startup environment.

Key Responsibilities

Design & Development

● Design, build, and maintain backend services and REST APIs in Node.js and Python that power BLKBOX.ai's products. ● Own features end-to-end: requirements, technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support. ● Contribute to design and architecture decisions for the services you own, including data modeling, API contracts, and service boundaries. Distributed Systems & Scalability ● Build and operate services that run across multiple instances and communicate asynchronously — handling concurrency, idempotency, retries, partial failures, and eventual consistency. ● Design for horizontal scale: stateless services, queue-based workloads, caching strategies, and efficient data access patterns. ● Identify performance bottlenecks (slow queries, hot paths, contention) and drive fixes with measurable impact. Data ● Design and evolve PostgreSQL schemas; write efficient queries, manage indexes, and handle migrations safely in production. ● Implement data integrity guarantees (transactions, constraints, locking strategies) appropriate to the use case. Reliability & Operations ● Instrument services with structured logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting; define and track SLOs for the services you own. ● Participate in the on-call rotation, troubleshoot production incidents, and contribute to post-incident reviews. ● Deploy and operate services on AWS using infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD pipelines. Security ● Apply application and API security practices: authentication/authorization, input validation, secrets management, and least-privilege IAM. Collaboration & Quality ● Partner with Product, Frontend, and other backend engineers to turn requirements into technical solutions and surface trade-offs early. ● Estimate work, flag dependencies and risks, and deliver predictably. ● Participate actively in code reviews, write clear documentation, and help onboard newer engineers. Required Qualifications ● 3–5 years of professional backend engineering experience. ● Strong hands-on proficiency in Node.js (TypeScript preferred) and Python; comfortable working in both. ● Solid grounding in data structures, algorithms, OOP, and software design principles. ● Experience designing and building production REST APIs, including versioning, pagination, error handling, and auth. ● Strong PostgreSQL experience: schema design, indexing, query optimization, transactions, and zero-downtime migrations. ● Working knowledge of distributed systems fundamentals: asynchronous messaging, idempotency, retries and backoff, consistency vs. availability trade-offs, and failure handling across service boundaries. ● Experience with caching (Redis or equivalent) and message queues/event streams (SQS, Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar). ● Hands-on experience with AWS — e.g., ECS/EKS or Lambda, RDS, SQS/SNS, S3, IAM, CloudWatch. ● Experience with Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and Git-based workflows. ● Experience with automated testing (unit, integration, contract) and production debugging using logs, metrics, and traces. Good to Have ● Experience integrating LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock) into backend services: streaming responses, prompt/response handling, rate limiting, cost controls. ● Experience with RAG pipelines, vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, etc.), or ML inference services. ● Experience with Kubernetes or other container orchestration. ● Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation). ● Experience with event-driven or microservices architectures at scale. ● Familiarity with observability tooling (OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Grafana). ● Prior experience in a startup or high-growth product environment.

What We're Looking For We're looking for an engineer who:

● Takes ownership of their work and sees services through to production. ● Can independently solve complex, distributed technical problems within their area. ● Writes clean, scalable, and maintainable code. ● Has a strong understanding of backend fundamentals, data, and distributed-systems design. ● Is comfortable working in a fast-paced and changing startup environment. ● Is proactive, curious, and continuously looks for ways to improve systems and processes.

Why Join BLKBOX.ai?

● Work on products involving AI, automation, data, and modern technology. ● High ownership and direct impact on product development. ● Opportunity to work on challenging distributed-systems and scalability problems. ● Remote-first work environment. ● Collaborate with a fast-moving and ambitious technology team. ● Opportunity to grow into larger technical and leadership responsibilities over time.

If you enjoy building reliable backend systems, solving challenging engineering problems, and taking ownership of services from development to production, we'd love to hear from you.

Pay: ₹2,400,000.00 - ₹3,000,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Flexible schedule
• Health insurance
• Paid sick time
• Paid time off
• Provident Fund
• Work from home

Application Question(s):

• How many years of professional backend engineering experience do you have?

3–5 years
Less than 3 years
More than 5 years

• How strong is your hands-on experience with Node.js / TypeScript and Python?

Strong experience in both
Strong in Node.js/TypeScript, basic in Python
Strong in Python, basic in Node.js
Limited experience in both

• Do you have hands-on experience building and maintaining production REST APIs?

Yes
No

• Do you have strong hands-on experience with PostgreSQL, including schema design, indexing, query optimization and transactions?

Yes
No

• Do you have experience working with distributed systems, asynchronous processing, message queues, retries, idempotency or eventual consistency?

Yes
No

• Do you have hands-on experience with AWS services such as ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, SQS/SNS, S3, IAM or CloudWatch?

Yes
No

• Do you have experience with automated testing and production debugging using logs, metrics or tracing?

Yes
No

• Do you have a stable, reliable high-speed internet connection and own Laptop suitable for full-time remote work?

Yes
No

• What is your current CTC & Expected CTC?
• What is your current notice period?

Immediate / Can join within 15 days
15–30 days
30–60 days
60–90 days
More than 90 days

• Are you comfortable working in a fully remote, fast-paced startup environment with end-to-end ownership and occasional production/on-call responsibilities?

Yes
No

• Are you comfortable working with the team’s required US timezone overlap and adjusting your working hours accordingly?

Yes
No

Work Location: Remote