Principal Backend Engineer (Go/PostgreSQL)

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Principal Backend Engineer (Go/PostgreSQL) based in India (Remote).** As a Principal Backend Engineer, you will build and scale reliable backend systems that power customer intelligence and AI-driven workflows. You will take ownership of complex product challenges, transforming ambiguous customer needs into practical, production-ready solutions. Working primarily with Go and PostgreSQL, you will develop multi-tenant services that integrate data from CRMs, customer conversations, and support platforms. You will design intelligent AI workflows that deliver actionable insights while maintaining reliability, security, and auditability. Your work will help revenue teams and AI agents better understand customer accounts and automate meaningful business actions. In a fast-moving, product-led environment, you will collaborate closely with stakeholders, leverage AI-assisted development tools, and influence technical decisions from architecture through production deployment. ### Accountabilities - **Backend Engineering and Product Development:** Design, develop, and maintain customer-facing features within a multi-tenant backend architecture using Go and PostgreSQL, ensuring solutions are reliable, maintainable, and scalable. - **Customer Data Integration:** Connect and consolidate information from multiple sources, including CRM platforms, customer conversations, and support systems, to create a consistent and actionable view of customer accounts. - **AI Workflow Engineering:** Build production-grade AI workflows that analyze information, generate customer intelligence, and execute permission-based actions while maintaining traceable and auditable records. - **LLM and Application Architecture:** Determine which tasks should be handled by large language models and which require deterministic application logic, calculations, or persistent data storage to ensure accuracy and control. - **Database Design and Optimization:** Design efficient PostgreSQL schemas, troubleshoot complex queries, resolve performance bottlenecks, and optimize data access patterns to support growing workloads. - **Reliability and Quality Assurance:** Develop workflows that can be safely rerun, implement appropriate error-handling mechanisms, and monitor output quality to identify regressions and maintain consistent results. - **Scalability and Performance:** Ensure services remain responsive and dependable across customer workspaces ranging from approximately 100 to 100,000 accounts. - **Infrastructure and Deployment:** Support production operations across AWS and Docker-based environments, including enterprise installations and on-premises deployments. - **End-to-End Ownership:** Take responsibility for features throughout their lifecycle, from understanding customer problems and designing technical solutions to implementation, deployment, monitoring, and incident resolution. - **Customer-Driven Improvement:** Work closely with users and incorporate customer feedback to refine existing functionality, improve usability, and deliver measurable product value. - **Rapid Delivery and Iteration:** During the first 30 days, become familiar with the existing system by delivering approximately two to three fixes per week and one to two improvements to existing features. - **Technical Leadership:** Within three to six months, take ownership of a major product capability from initial requirements through production adoption. Potential areas include customer intelligence pipelines, customer success management agents, renewal automation, and expansion signals. - **AI-Assisted Development:** Use AI coding tools effectively to accelerate implementation while maintaining high standards for code quality, readability, testing, and long-term maintainability. ## Requirements - **Professional Experience:** At least eight years of backend engineering experience in product-based organizations, including meaningful experience working in startup environments. Candidates must currently be working at a product-based organization. - **Go Development:** Strong hands-on experience designing, building, and operating production services using Go. - **PostgreSQL Expertise:** Proven ability to design relational database schemas, debug and optimize queries, and address database performance and scalability challenges. - **Production AI Experience:** Experience shipping customer-facing products that use large language models to make judgments or support decisions, beyond prototypes, demonstrations, or experimental projects. - **End-to-End Technical Ownership:** Demonstrated experience owning services or features from initial design through production deployment, including ongoing reliability, monitoring, and issue resolution. - **Problem-Solving Skills:** Ability to navigate ambiguous requirements, independently identify practical solutions, and translate complex customer problems into working product capabilities. - **AI Development Tools:** Regular experience using AI-powered development tools to build products, improve productivity, and produce clean, maintainable code. - **Product Engineering Mindset:** Experience working closely with customers or end users and using their feedback to guide product improvements and technical priorities. - **System Design and Architecture:** Strong understanding of backend architecture, distributed systems, multi-tenant applications, data integration, and scalable service design. - **Reliability and Performance:** Ability to design robust systems with appropriate error handling, safe retries, repeatable workflows, and mechanisms for monitoring application behavior and AI output quality. - **Infrastructure Knowledge:** Familiarity with Docker, AWS, production deployments, and supporting applications across enterprise and on-premises environments. - **Communication and Collaboration:** Strong communication skills, sound technical judgment, and the ability to explain architectural decisions and trade-offs clearly while working independently. - **Additional Advantages:** A public GitHub profile, relevant side projects, or a technical blog demonstrating engineering expertise and personal initiative would be a strong plus. ## Benefits - **Competitive Compensation:** Annual compensation of approximately ₹50,00,000 to ₹1,00,00,000, as advertised for the role. - **Remote Work:** Full-time remote opportunity for candidates based in India. - **Contractor Engagement:** Full-time contractor arrangement with a US-based organization. The advertised terms state that no deductions will be made from the agreed compensation by the hiring company. - **High Ownership:** Direct responsibility for important product capabilities, with the opportunity to influence architecture, engineering practices, and product direction. - **AI-First Engineering Environment:** Work extensively with large language models, AI workflows, and AI-assisted coding tools to solve practical customer problems. - **Meaningful Product Impact:** Build customer intelligence systems that help revenue teams and AI agents understand accounts, automate workflows, and make better-informed decisions. - **Technical Autonomy:** Have a meaningful voice in architectural decisions, implementation strategies, and the evolution of the backend platform. - **Fast Learning and Development:** Work on challenging problems involving data integration, scalable systems, AI reliability, and production-grade software engineering. - **Direct Customer Impact:** Improve a real product through close engagement with users and rapid feedback-driven development. - **Interview Process:** Expect three to four technical interview rounds covering programming, system design, and AI tool usage, along with a take-home assignment.