Lead Backend Engineer

US Mobile•New York, NY

12d•$180,000 - $240,000

About The Position

US Mobile is building the future of wireless communication with the goal of one unified network open to any person and any device, worldwide. They are empowering customers with multiple networks on one phone and plan, plus home internet from Starlink, offering no lock-in, no commitments, and custom-fit plans. They pride themselves on 24/7 customer support with real people and use real-time feedback from various channels to inform product roadmaps. US Mobile has been recognized as The Wirecutter's favorite cellular carrier and Consumer Reports' top-rated mobile carrier for two consecutive years. They are building innovative, scalable systems with a network-agnostic tech stack and agile, cross-functional teams built on trust and mutual respect. This role is for individuals who work fast, flexibly, and collaboratively without compromising standards. Weâ€™re looking for an exceptional backend engineering leader: a hands-on manager and technical mentor who can build, grow, and guide a team of backend engineers while directly shaping our architecture and roadmap as we scale. The Lead Backend Engineer owns the growth and output of a backend engineering pod â€” hiring, developing, and managing a small team â€” while remaining a strong hands-on contributor and a voice in technical direction. This is a player-coach role: youâ€™ll write code and review architecture alongside your team, not just direct it from a distance, while also partnering with Talent to build out the team and with Engineering leadership to shape where the backend goes next.

Requirements

12+ years of experience with Java and Spring Boot, including experience in a technical leadership or people management role
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
Demonstrated experience managing, mentoring, and growing backend engineers, including hiring and performance management.
Proven ability to influence technical direction and drive architectural decisions at a team or organizational level.
Strong stakeholder management skills – able to represent backend engineeringâ€™s perspective persuasively in front of executives, PMs, and cross-functional partners.
Comfort operating in a fast paced environment – wearing multiple hats across engineering, hiring, and cross-functional work
Experience partnering with Talent/Recruiting to build and scale engineering teams – defining roles, running hiring processes, and closing candidates.
Strong experience with building and consuming REST APIs.
Hands-on experience with message brokers such as RabbitMQ or AWS SQS/SNS.
Familiarity with MongoDB or other NoSQL database technologies.
Experience integrating and leveraging AI-assisted development tools such as Claude and Opencode to accelerate backend development, including code generation, debugging, and optimization of APIs and services.
Demonstrated ability to incorporate AI tools into the software development lifecycle, using Claude or Opencode for tasks like automated code reviews, documentation generation, and improving system design efficiency.
Solid understanding of Git, CI/CD workflows, and agile development practices.
Excellent debugging, problem-solving, and communication skills.

Responsibilities

Build and lead a team – hire, mentor, and grow a high-performing group of backend engineers as we scale.
Shape technical direction – influence architecture, tooling, and roadmap decisions across backend systems.
Stay hands-on – architect optimal solutions to our business problems and ship features alongside your team.
Scale our systems – help us grow to tens of millions of customers and connected devices.
Raise the bar – build quality tools and frameworks to ensure a high-quality product.
Protect reliability – build systems to ensure continuous uptime.
Influence technical direction and architectural decisions across backend systems – balancing pragmatism with long-term scalability.
Champion a bias toward action – prototype to resolve disagreements, ship incrementally, and avoid analysis paralysis on reversible decisions.
Model high autonomy for your team – make sound judgment calls without unnecessary approval layers, while remaining accountable for outcomes.
Continuously improve systems beyond your immediate scope – identify and fix inefficiencies, technical debt, or brittle abstractions wherever you find them, regardless of team ownership.
Develop and maintain RESTful APIs using Java (Spring Boot or related web frameworks) or Python (Flask, Django).
Design and implement asynchronous service communication using RabbitMQ or AWS SQS/SNS.
Work with NoSQL databases like MongoDB for data modeling and storage.
Collaborate with Product, QA, and DevOps teams to deliver reliable, scalable features, representing backend engineering in cross-functional planning.
Write clean, testable, well-documented code with unit and integration tests – staying hands-on as an active contributor, not just a reviewer.
Participate in system architecture design, code reviews, and performance tuning.
Set and uphold engineering standards and best practices across your team.
Manage, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers – owning hiring decisions, performance management, career development, and day-to-day team health.
Partner closely with Talent/Recruiting to define hiring needs, shape interview processes, and build out the backend engineering team as we scale.