Senior Backend Engineer

Vantage Compute is reinventing refunds, striving to make every experience refundable. Our strength lies in our proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) embedded refund protection platform, which provides massive distribution and a top-tier digital purchasing experience for insurance carriers, event organizers, booking platforms, ticketing systems, and their consumers. Our e-commerce solution is embedded in millions of carts each month, and we're seeking a talented Senior Backend Engineer to join our high-performing team. We're looking for a Senior Backend Developer who will design and develop cloud-native systems that power the Vantage Compute platform, serving millions of users and processing hundreds of millions of events daily. This isn't just a build-and-ship role, we're looking for an engineer who thinks deeply about system architecture, cloud infrastructure, and performance, and brings that expertise to bear as an active, collaborative member of the team. You'll work independently and take ownership of your own work, while actively engaging with teammates through code reviews, technical discussions, and daily syncs. This is an excellent opportunity to make a meaningful impact at a rapidly growing technology company working at significant scale. Key Responsibilities: System Architecture: Contribute to the design of scalable, resilient backend systems and microservices. Evaluate architectural trade-offs, help define service boundaries, and bring strong architectural instincts that elevate team discussions and code reviews. Cloud Infrastructure & Operations: Build and operate cloud-native systems on AWS. Work across services like ECS, RDS, ElastiCache, SQS, Lambda, and CloudWatch to build reliable, scalable, and observable infrastructure. Performance Engineering: Apply performance expertise across the stack — from database query plans and indexing strategies to caching layers and async processing pipelines. Proactively surface and address bottlenecks as part of the development process. API & Backend Development: Design and develop APIs, microservices, and backend services that power applications used by millions of users, processing hundreds of millions of events each day. Platform Improvement: Devise new approaches to solve problems, refactor, and optimize services to continuously improve the Vantage Compute platform. Code Quality & Standards: Participate in code reviews with a focus on architectural principles and performance best practices, and write comprehensive automated tests to ensure system reliability. Technical Documentation: Document architectural decisions, system design, and performance findings to support team knowledge sharing and long-term maintainability. Agile Participation: Take part in sprint planning, estimation, retrospectives, and daily standups as part of our Agile workflow. Production Support: Participate in on-call rotation and troubleshoot production issues as they arise, applying systematic root-cause analysis. AI-Augmented Development: Leverage AI coding tools, agentic workflows, and MCP servers to accelerate development, improve code quality, and explore automation opportunities across the stack. Help evaluate and integrate AI capabilities, including LLM APIs and MCP-based tooling, into backend services and internal workflows as adoption continues to grow. Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, related field, or equivalent practical experience. 5+ years of professional Python development experience. 3+ years building production applications with Django or similar CMS frameworks. Demonstrated experience contributing to the design and architecture of high-volume, distributed backend systems. Hands-on experience building and operating production systems on AWS (ECS, RDS, SQS, CloudWatch, or similar services). Strong knowledge of PostgreSQL, including query optimization, indexing strategies, and performance tuning at scale. Hands-on experience with caching strategies (Redis, Memcached) and asynchronous task processing. Track record of diagnosing and resolving complex performance bottlenecks in production environments. Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain architectural decisions and technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. This is a fully remote position. Candidates must have a reliable internet connection and an appropriate home office workspace. Bonus Skills: Experience with Django Ninja or similar API frameworks. Experience with Celery or similar distributed task queues. Hands-on experience with AI coding tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) and familiarity with agentic development workflows or LLM API integration. Hands-on experience with AI coding tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot), agentic development workflows, and familiarity with MCP servers, consuming existing ones and building custom integrations against internal tools and APIs. Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraf