Principal Backend Engineer

FeathrRemote - ET (Eastern)$145k – $165k1w ago

Remote Principal NA Nonprofit Software Cloud Computing Backend Engineer Principal Claude Cursor MongoDB Flask Elasticsearch

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Requirements

6+ years of backend software engineering experience
4+ years designing and operating distributed software systems at scale
Track record of leading technical initiatives that span multiple teams or services
Deep expertise in Python, Flask, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Redis
Experience defining and evolving engineering standards, practices, and tooling for an organization
Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor); we use these daily and consider them core to our workflow
Design and evaluate system architectures with a focus on reliability, scalability, and operational cost
Deep knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and their practical performance characteristics
Expert-level proficiency with Elasticsearch—schema design, query optimization, cluster operations, and scaling strategies
Expert-level proficiency with MongoDB—data modeling, aggregation pipelines, indexing strategies, and operational maintenance at scale
Comprehensive knowledge of AWS infrastructure and services (EC2, EKS, SQS, S3, and beyond)
Design and maintain event-driven architectures and data ingestion pipelines across diverse sources
Strong understanding of security, compliance, and data governance in enterprise SaaS environments
Define testing strategies that balance coverage, speed, and maintainability across a multi-service codebase
Identify and drive adoption of AI-assisted development practices that meaningfully improve team velocity and code quality
Nice to have: Experience with Docker, self-hosted Drone CI/CD, Kubernetes, Helm, programmatic advertising platforms, or capacity planning
Your Qualities:
Your Qualities:
Pragmatic and customer-oriented—you build software to help customers solve real problems, and you help others do the same
A systems thinker who sees how individual decisions compound across a codebase, a team, and an organization
Decisive under ambiguity; you make sound technical calls with incomplete information and adjust when new facts emerge
Exceptional communicator; you translate between business strategy and technical architecture fluently
A force multiplier—you make every engineer around you more effective through mentorship, code review, design feedback, and tooling
Opinionated but open-minded; you advocate strongly for your position and change your mind when presented with better evidence
Patient with people, impatient with systemic problems; you invest in long-term fixes over recurring workarounds
Service-oriented; you build sustainable systems and sustainable teams
Your Day:
Drive architectural decisions that affect the platform's reliability, scalability, and long-term maintainability
Design and implement high-impact backend features and services, particularly when the problem space is novel or ambiguous
Identify systemic technical risks and lead efforts to address them before they become critical
Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and direct feedback
Collaborate with engineering leadership, product managers, and stakeholders to align technical strategy with business goals
Set and raise the bar for code quality, testing practices, and operational excellence
Evaluate build-vs-buy decisions, new technologies, and architectural patterns for the team
Debug the hardest production issues—the ones that cross service boundaries and resist simple explanations
Ensure the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of Feathr's data and operations
Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Responsibilities

Shape the technical direction of systems for advertising, marketing, and analytics needs.
Identify systemic risks before they become incidents.
Drive architectural decisions that compound over years.
Raise engineering quality across the organization.
Balance hands-on technical work with strategic influence.
Make tradeoff judgments when paths forward are ambiguous.
Design and evaluate system architectures focusing on reliability, scalability, and operational cost.
Deep knowledge of data structures, algorithms, practical performance characteristics.
Expertise in Elasticsearch—schema design, query optimization, cluster operations, scaling strategies.
Proficiency with MongoDB—data modeling, aggregation pipelines, indexing strategies, maintenance at scale.
Design and maintain event-driven architectures and data ingestion pipelines across diverse sources.
Strong understanding of security, compliance, and data governance in enterprise SaaS environments.
Define testing strategies for multi-service codebase balancing coverage, speed, and maintainability.
Drive adoption of AI-assisted development practices to improve workflow efficiency.

Benefits

Benefits: Health, dental, vision, Summr and Wintr breaks, paid vacation and sick time
Feathr's SaaS platform is a critical component of the value we deliver to our clients. As a Principal Backend Software Engineer, you shape the technical direction of the systems that meet the advertising, marketing, and analytics needs of our diverse customer base. You operate across teams and time horizons—identifying systemic risks before they become incidents, driving architectural decisions that compound over years, and raising the bar for engineering quality across the organization. You balance hands-on technical work with strategic influence, and your judgment is trusted to make the right tradeoffs when the path forward is ambiguous.
Starting salary for this position is $145,000 annually depending on experience and credentials, with the potential to earn an additional 12% of base salary.
In addition, you’ll receive health/dental/vision insurance, and other benefits like a professional development budget, office food, and social events, not to mention being a part of a supportive and motivated Professional Services team.
This role is open to remote candidates located within the United States, with a preference for those in the EST or CST time zones. There is also an option to work from our headquarters in Gainesville, FL. If you aren’t familiar, Gainesville is a hip, mid-sized city with a highly innovative population and an attainable standard of living.
Interview Process:
As a part of our commitment to creating a fair, equitable, and positive interview experience for all candidates, we offer full transparency of our interview stages to give applicants an idea of the time and effort involved. Additionally, each interview stage consists of standardized questions and rubrics with a scoring system to ensure a consistent and fair assessment practice of all candidates.
HR Information Screen - The Talent Acquisition Team will invite candidates that move forward to a 20-30 minute virtual interview. This conversation will be focused on relevant work experience, compensation, role overview, and answering any questions the candidate has.
We love our Flock and the work they do! But let’s be honest, life isn’t just about work. So we created a perks and benefits package that aims to help our team grow by including their wellness, families, passions, and personal time.
Full vision and dental, 99% health insurance
Flexible Work Schedule
Sick time for when you need to take care of your physical or mental health
Extended Summr + Wintr Breaks
Wellness Reimbursement Credit
Professional Development Budget
Team hangouts and events
Feathr defines culture as the secret sauce that makes our flock members want to come to work everyday and do their best work. Like every company, we have an acronym that conveys the most important aspects of the culture we strive to have.
Practicality: Progress Over Perfection
Ambition: When Feathr wins, We all win
Candor: Better communication, Better results
Trust: Assume the best, Share openly
Service: We exist to fix
This acronym is only as useful as the integrity of the people who reference it and believe in it. Every person at Feathr will face challenges, the most important quality is a commitment to work through those challenges with self-awareness and honesty.