Lead Backend Engineer
Arlington, VA — Hybrid · Full-time
$160,000–$225,000 + bonus + stock options
Lead the architecture behind real-time, mission-critical AI platforms
BluJuniper 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 Lead Backend Engineer who wants to set the technical direction for the backend platform that ties all of it together, and who still loves writing the code.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You will architect Go services, define how distributed systems communicate, guide a team of strong engineers, and stay accountable for how everything behaves in production.
What You’ll Build
You may lead work on systems that:
- Stream real-time audio and video through WebRTC and LiveKit infrastructure.
- Move operational events across services through Kafka and event-driven architectures.
- Serve computer vision, NLP, and audio models to live applications with low latency.
- Enforce secure data models, authentication, and role-based access control across distributed environments.
- Scale across cloud and edge environments where reliability and failure recovery are non-negotiable.
You will own the architecture, not just a ticket queue.
The Role
As Lead Backend Engineer, you will define the microservice architecture, set engineering standards, and make the key tradeoffs about service boundaries, data, messaging, and security.
You will spend real time in the code, reviewing designs, unblocking engineers, and partnering with AI/ML, mobile, frontend, and infrastructure teams to ship complete capabilities.
Responsibilities
- Architect and build production backend services in Go.
- Define microservice boundaries, APIs, event flows, and data contracts.
- Design real-time media infrastructure using WebRTC and LiveKit.
- Build Kafka-backed, event-driven systems that stay reliable under load.
- Design secure data models, authentication, and RBAC across services.
- Lead architecture reviews, design discussions, and code reviews.
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across the team.
- Own production reliability, observability, and incident response for backend systems.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of professional backend or distributed-systems engineering experience.
- Strong production experience with Go.
- Experience leading technical design and guiding other engineers.
- Deep understanding of microservices, concurrency, networking, and fault tolerance.
- Experience with relational databases, schema design, and data modeling.
- Experience designing authentication and authorization systems.
- Experience operating cloud-based systems on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
- Legally authorized to work in the United States.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with Apache Kafka and event-driven architectures.
- Experience with WebRTC, LiveKit, or real-time media systems.
- Experience building infrastructure for AI/ML, computer vision, or NLP.
- Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD.
- Experience in defense, government, public safety, or high-security environments.
Why This Role Is Different
You will shape the technical direction of the product from the backend up, with a team small enough that your decisions are visible everywhere.
You will work alongside specialists in AI, computer vision, audio, and navigation, solving problems that rarely show up in conventional backend roles.
What Success Looks Like
Success means the backend platform is coherent, secure, and dependable, and the engineers around you are faster and better because of the architecture and standards you set.
You anticipate failure modes, keep complexity in check, and turn ambiguous requirements into systems that hold up in the real world.
Compensation
The base salary range for this position is $160,000–$225,000 per year, depending on experience, qualifications, and other relevant factors.
Eligible employees may also receive performance bonuses and stock options in addition to base salary.
Location
This is a hybrid role based in Arlington, VA.
Benefits
Eligible employees receive:
- Health, dental, and vision coverage.
- Performance bonus opportunities.
- Stock options.
- Flexible work environment.
- Significant technical ownership.
- Direct influence over product and architecture decisions.
- Opportunities to work across AI/ML, distributed systems, computer vision, audio, NLP, navigation, optimization, and real-time infrastructure.
- A collaborative engineering environment with direct visibility into company and product strategy.
Work Authorization and Clearance Eligibility
Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. An active U.S. government security clearance is not required for this role, but candidates who currently hold or have previously held a clearance are encouraged to note it in their application.
Certain customer, contractual, or regulatory requirements may require additional eligibility verification.
Equal Opportunity Employer
BluJuniper is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law.
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