Democrance

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our engineering team and take meaningful ownership of our backend systems. You will be a core contributor to our platform, working across Ruby, Python, and Node.js with a Rails backbone — shipping well-architected, scalable services that run reliably on GCP.

This is a role for someone who is self-directed and dependable — you hold yourself to a high standard, you own your work end-to-end, and you don't need hand-holding to figure out what needs to be done. If you thrive in a lean, high-trust environment where autonomy is the norm rather than the exception, this is the right place for you.

You will work with stunning, supportive product and engineering teams on problems that matter — contributing to infrastructure, products, and features with the potential for meaningful, wide-reaching impact.

What you will do

• Write well-documented, thoroughly tested, scalable, and extensible code across our Ruby, Python, and Node.js services.
• Architect and evolve the application backend — designing APIs, data models, and service boundaries with long-term maintainability in mind.
• Build and operate microservices deployed on GCP, leveraging GKE and Cloud Run for containerised workloads.
• Own and improve our infrastructure end-to-end — provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, secrets management, and cost optimisation.
• Lead infrastructure reliability work: Kubernetes and database upgrades, alerting and monitoring setup (Grafana/Prometheus), and a structured audit of our existing GCP setup to reduce risk and technical debt.
• Take full ownership of your systems in production — monitoring, debugging, and resolving issues quickly when they arise.
• Integrate with third-party APIs and payment processors; contribute to a platform handling real financial transactions.
• Work with Redis for caching and queueing, and Elasticsearch for search and analytics use cases.
• Collaborate closely with front-end engineers building React-based UIs, providing clean, well-specified APIs.
• Uphold quality at every stage — code reviews, automated testing, and raising the bar for engineering standards across the team.
• Support the growth of engineers around you — through thoughtful code reviews, design feedback, and sharing context generously.
• Take initiative in identifying technical debt and proactively proposing improvements to architecture or process.

What we’re looking for

• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience, with a strong track record of shipping production systems.
• Proficiency in Ruby (Rails) as a primary stack; comfortable working in Python and Node.js as well.
• Proven, hands‑on experience deploying and operating services on GCP — GKE, Cloud Run, and related managed services.
• Comfortable managing Kubernetes clusters in production — not just deploying to GKE, but handling upgrades, node pool management, and cluster health.
• Hands‑on with secrets management tooling (GCP Secret Manager, Vault, or equivalent) and network‑level infra work (VPNs, TLS certificates, environment isolation).Solid understanding of Redis (caching, pub/sub, job queues) and Elasticsearch.
• Strong command of REST API design, relational databases (PostgreSQL / MySQL), and microservices patterns.
• Experience with DevOps practices: Docker, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent), and infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform).
• Independent and reliable — you take ownership of your work, communicate proactively, and can drive tasks to completion without close supervision.
• Security‑conscious — comfortable with secrets management, secure API design, and the implications of handling financial data.
• Strong competencies in data structures, algorithms, and software design.
• Familiar with Agile / Scrum workflows and comfortable in small, fast‑moving teams.
• Bonus: experience with React, serverless architectures, payment processor integrations (Stripe, Checkout), and familiarity with BigQuery and data pipeline patterns.