Backend Engineer

Fellow•San Francisco, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Fellow is looking for a Backend Engineer to build, scale, and operate the backend systems and IoT infrastructure that connect our physical products to the cloud. This role requires regular in-office presence in San Francisco, CA. The successful candidate will possess excellent backend engineering fundamentals paired with hands-on experience owning a connected-device fleet end to end — from secure provisioning through OTA delivery. This is an opportunity to own the full device-to-cloud stack for physical products. Reporting to the Director of Firmware and Software, you will be responsible for developing, maintaining, and optimizing our backend systems and IoT infrastructure, and will serve as the connective tissue between our hardware devices, mobile application, and cloud backend. You bring strong technical judgment, a high engineering bar, and the operational instincts to ship reliable systems. We are looking for someone who can drive technical decisions independently while remaining agile and pragmatic. You’ll champion AI, automation, and new ways of working to drive the effectiveness and efficiency of our engineering team. This is a hands-on technical role. You’ll set the architectural direction for our device-to-cloud stack, and you’ll also roll up your sleeves to build, ship, and operate it yourself.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
5+ years of experience in backend engineering, with proficiency in TypeScript, Node.js, Python, and libraries such as Express.js, NestJS, React, or Next.js.
Experience designing and operating scalable PostgreSQL systems, including replication, indexing, query tuning, capacity planning, and data lifecycle or archival strategies.
API Development using REST and GraphQL
Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD using Terraform or AWS CloudFormation and GitHub Actions or Jenkins, including automated testing, environment promotion, staged rollout, rollback, and release-branching strategies.
Hands-on experience with AWS IoT or similar IoT cloud services, including MQTT, device management, secure provisioning, certificate lifecycle management, staged OTA updates, and secure communication protocols.
Experience designing highly available, scalable AWS architectures using services such as ECS, Lambda, S3, API Gateway, and SQS, including backup and restore testing, disaster recovery, and multi-region readiness.
Experience operating Linux-based Docker containers in production environments.
Experience defining and operating observability programs using logs, metrics, traces, service KPIs, SLIs, and SLOs, alerting, and incident response.
Strong understanding of cloud and IoT security, including IAM/RBAC, least-privilege production access, PKI/TLS, secrets management, and device certificate lifecycle.

Nice To Haves

Experience with real-time or event-driven architectures and synchronization across cloud services, mobile applications, and connected devices.
Experience with cloud cost management and FinOps practices, including cost monitoring, rightsizing, capacity planning, and ongoing optimization.
Experience applying AI to operational data, such as log and metrics analysis, and familiarity with Retrieval-Augmented Generation, LangChain, or agentic workflows.
Experience with factory provisioning or manufacturing systems, including pre-authentication, certificate injection, hardware validation, and manufacturing-data visualization.
Experience with e-commerce or payment integrations such as Shopify and with third-party device ecosystems such as Alexa, Google Home/Nest, or Siri.
Experience with multi-region or multi-cloud migrations, including global or China-region cloud environments.
Familiarity with secure remote device debugging and log collection using controlled tunnels or SSH, plus hardware interfaces and firmware flashing workflows.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain robust, scalable backend services on AWS.
Evolve ECS- and Lambda-based systems, consolidate services where appropriate, and build reliable real-time and event-driven synchronization across devices, mobile applications, and backend platforms.
Own database reliability and performance, including PostgreSQL replication, indexing, query optimization, capacity planning, data lifecycle and archival, and tested backup and restore procedures for databases and S3.
Implement and manage AWS IoT Core and related services, including API Gateway, SQS, MQTT, Rules Engine, Device Shadow, secure device provisioning, certificate lifecycle management, and staged OTA delivery.
Define and operate service KPIs, SLIs, and SLOs for latency, errors, response time, dead-letter queues, and OTA success.
Build logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and incident-response practices; reduce performance bottlenecks and cloud waste; and lead disaster-recovery planning, restore testing, and multi-region readiness.
Build secure internal tools and analytics for Customer Support and manufacturing teams, deliver factory and operational data visualization, and apply automation or AI-assisted analysis to logs and service metrics.
Own Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD workflows using tools such as Terraform or AWS CloudFormation and GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
Lead safe environment migrations and cutovers, automated QA gates, feature-based release practices, staged deployments, rollbacks, and coordinated OTA releases.
Apply least-privilege IAM and RBAC, restrict production access, manage secrets and device certificates, secure OTA and factory-provisioning workflows, and establish auditable support and debugging paths without exposing administrative cloud access.
Work closely with the software development, product management, and QA teams to ensure that the entire development and release process is smooth and efficient.
Explore and deliver payment and commerce integrations, AI agents and voice commands, voice-assistant ecosystems, and secure remote device diagnostics when they support the product roadmap.
Stay current with the latest architectural approaches in secure IoT device provisioning and management for consumer hardware.
Provide ongoing recommendations to evolve system designs.
Identify potential risks in software development and create strategies to mitigate them, ensuring the safety and efficacy of our appliances.