Job Title: Senior Backend Engineer Company Name: Distro Job Url: https://www.simplyhired.com/job/MCB-LfQRkjkh-2HgouOohWmJLin3YcZeSI1XiM0hhv6piHhh6Pv2hw Job Description: Senior Backend Engineer Distro Remote Job Details Full-time $140,000 - $200,000 a year 10 hours ago Benefits Health insurance Paid time off 401(k) matching Flexible schedule Qualifications Authentication Data model design Hospitality Version control Performance tuning Go Node.js Data modeling projects New product development 5 years Infrastructure as Code (IaC) C# IT system monitoring GitHub Actions System design Shopify Test-driven development MongoDB Scalable systems Prompt engineering Java Automating deployment processes Microservices SQL Data Architecture Design (Architecture design skills) Swagger Solution architecture design Sentiment analytics Machine learning Loyalty programs Terraform Redis New Relic Mentoring Ruby Text classification Scalability Developing and maintaining backend systems S3 Amazon CloudWatch Serverless cloud services CircleCI Integration testing GraphQL DynamoDB Distributed computing Senior level AI Cloud monitoring Pair programming POS systems TypeScript Communication skills Postman (API platform) Python AWS CloudFormation AWS Lambda Full Job Description About Ovation Ovation is a comprehensive customer experience management platform for restaurant brands. Without Ovation, guests who want to share feedback are forced to use long surveys (too much friction), online reviews (hurts restaurants), or complaining (ineffective). There is a better way to connect with guests, build relationships, and make restaurants better: Ovation. The world of guest communication has changed forever-and we’re making it happen for hospitality! The Role We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer who thrives in building event-driven, distributed systems that power customer-facing experiences at scale. This is a high-impact role where you'll design and build systems that directly affect how thousands of restaurants connect with their customers. You'll have the autonomy to make architectural decisions, mentor other engineers, and shape our technical direction. Ovation is poised to grow to amazing new heights, and we want you along for the ride! What Makes This Role Interesting You'll be at the forefront of AI-powered product development, building intelligent features that transform how restaurants connect with millions of customers. Your value as an engineer will skyrocket with what you learn here! As part of a small, high-impact engineering team, you'll have significant influence over our technology stack, architecture decisions, and product direction. Your voice will directly shape where we go. This is a rare opportunity to work on challenging problems at scale (event-driven microservices, real-time communications, complex integrations) while building the technical foundation of a rapidly growing platform. What We Offer Competitive Compensation: Strong, competitive salary Flexible Work: Remote-first culture with occasional fun in-person gatherings Growth: Clear career progression path with growth opportunities Learning: Budget for new tools and the flexibility to experiment Health & Wellness: Great benefits with 401k matching Work-Life Balance: Flexible hours, generous PTO, company holidays, Focus Fridays, and a life-balance policy for messaging only during work hours (excluding emergencies) What You'll Do System Design & Architecture Design and implement scalable, event-driven microservices that handle high-volume customer interactions Build robust APIs consumed by web, mobile, and third-party integrations Design database schemas and queries that perform well at scale Make architectural decisions about service boundaries, data flow, and system integration patterns Lead technical discussions on trade-offs between different approaches to solving complex problems Build systems with observability in mind: logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting Core Development Develop features across our backend services: survey orchestration, messaging systems, campaign execution, analytics processing, and integration webhooks Build and maintain integrations with external platforms (POS systems, loyalty programs, review platforms) Implement business logic that spans multiple services and data sources Write clean, maintainable code with comprehensive test coverage AI-Powered Development Build AI-driven features by integrating with AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) Leverage proven AI-first strategies in development that rise above just vibe coding Experiment with tools to level up our SDLC Collaboration & Leadership Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through code reviews and pair programming Collaborate with product managers to translate requirements into technical designs Work with frontend engineers to design effective API contracts Share knowledge and establish engineering best practices Establish a long-term technical vision What We're Looking For Core Competencies (Required) Distributed Systems Expertise 5+ years of experience building backend systems, APIs, or distributed services Strong understanding of microservices architecture, service-to-service communication, and eventual consistency Experience with event-driven architectures (message queues, pub/sub, event buses) API Design & Development Deep experience designing and building RESTful or GraphQL APIs Understanding of API versioning, authentication/authorization, and rate limiting Knowledge of API documentation and contract-first development Database Design & Optimization Strong database design skills with either SQL or NoSQL databases Experience with query optimization, indexing strategies, and performance tuning Understanding of data modeling for operational vs analytical workloads Software Engineering Fundamentals Test-driven development mindset with experience in unit, integration, and end-to-end testing Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation Experience with version control, code review, and collaborative development Valued Experience While we don't require experience with our specific tech stack, the following backgrounds would help you ramp up quickly: Technologies We Use Language: Node.js / TypeScript (we're open to engineers from Python, Ruby, Go, Java, C#, etc.) Cloud Platform: AWS (Lambda, EventBridge, SQS, S3, API Gateway, DynamoDB) Database: MongoDB with Mongoose (experience with any document database like Cosmos DB, Firestore, etc. translates well) Framework: Serverless Framework (experience with serverless architecture, FaaS, or containerized microservices) Patterns: Event-driven architecture, CQRS, saga pattern, outbox pattern Domain Experience SaaS platform development for B2B customers Multi-tenant architecture and data isolation Real-time communication systems (SMS, email, webhooks) Integration platforms or API aggregation Restaurant tech, hospitality, or local business software AI & Machine Learning Experience integrating LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, etc.) Prompt engineering and optimization for production systems Building AI-powered features (sentiment analysis, text generation, classification) Cost optimization and latency tuning for AI services Platform & Tools Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform, CDK, Pulumi) Monitoring and observability tools (New Relic, DataDog, Sentry, CloudWatch) API documentation tools (Swagger/OpenAPI, Postman) Background job processing systems (Celery, Sidekiq, Bull, etc.) Our Tech Stack You'll be working with: Backend: Node.js Platform: AWS Database: MongoDB Atlas with Mongoose ODM Event System: AWS EventBridge for inter-service communication Message Queues: AWS SQS for async processing Monitoring: New Relic APM, CloudWatch Logs Deployment: GitHub Actions CI/CD Don't worry if this isn't your current stack - we value strong engineering fundamentals and system design skills over specific tool knowledge. Senior engineers adapt quickly, and we'll support your learning curve. Job Type: Full-time Pay: $140,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year Work Location: Remote We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.