Senior Backend Engineer

$160,000–$225,000 + bonus + stock options

Build the systems behind mission-critical AI applications

$160,000–$225,000 + bonus + stock options

Build the systems behind mission-critical AI applications

Blu Juniper is an AI and optimization company building advanced software for complex operational environments.

Our engineers work on systems that bring together real-time communications, computer vision, audio intelligence, natural language processing, navigation, geospatial data, optimization, and secure cloud infrastructure.

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer who wants to build the infrastructure that makes these systems work in the real world.

This is not a role focused on maintaining conventional CRUD services.

You will design distributed systems that move real-time data, coordinate services, enforce security boundaries, support AI/ML workloads, and remain reliable under demanding operational conditions.

You will work primarily in Go and have meaningful ownership over architecture, implementation, and production systems.

You may work on systems that:

• Process and distribute real-time audio, video, geospatial, and operational data.
• Connect AI/ML services with production applications and real-time workflows.
• Support secure audio and video communication using WebRTC and Live Kit.
• Coordinate distributed services through Kafka and event-driven architectures.
• Enforce fine-grained authentication, authorization, and role-based access control.
• Power navigation, computer vision, NLP, and audio-processing applications.
• Operate reliably across cloud environments where observability, latency, security, and failure recovery matter.
• Support users making time-sensitive decisions with live operational information.

You will help decide how these systems are designed, not simply implement specifications handed to you.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will take complex technical problems from architecture through production.

You will define service boundaries, design APIs and data models, choose communication and persistence patterns, evaluate system tradeoffs, write production-quality Go, and operate the systems you build.

You will work closely with engineers specializing in AI/ML, computer vision, audio, NLP, navigation, frontend development, infrastructure, and security.

The problems are often multidisciplinary. A feature may involve distributed backend services, streaming data, AI inference, access control, real-time communications, and operational constraints at the same time.

We are looking for someone who enjoys that kind of complexity.

• Design, build, and operate production backend services primarily in Go.
• Architect distributed systems for reliability, scalability, low latency, observability, and security.
• Define APIs, service boundaries, event flows, and communication contracts between distributed services.
• Build event-driven systems using Apache Kafka and similar technologies.
• Develop real-time communication infrastructure using WebRTC, Live Kit, and related systems.
• Design data models, database schemas, persistence strategies, and high-performance data-access patterns.
• Build authentication and authorization systems, including RBAC and least-privilege access models.
• Integrate backend infrastructure with AI/ML, computer vision, audio, NLP, navigation, and geospatial systems.
• Diagnose difficult production issues involving performance, concurrency, networking, scaling, and distributed-system failures.
• Design automated testing and integration strategies for complex backend systems.
• Participate in architecture reviews, technical design discussions, code reviews, and implementation planning.
• Make pragmatic architectural decisions that balance speed, simplicity, performance, and long-term maintainability.
• Mentor engineers and help improve engineering practices across the team.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience focused on backend, platform, or distributed systems.
• Strong production experience with Go.
• Experience designing and operating distributed services in production.
• Strong understanding of concurrency, networking, APIs, service boundaries, fault tolerance, and distributed-system fundamentals.
• Experience with relational databases, schema design, domain modeling, and production data-access patterns.
• Experience designing authentication and authorization systems, including RBAC or similar access-control models.
• Experience deploying and operating…