Senior Backend Engineer

DuckDuckGo

2d • Remote

About The Position

Hi, we're DuckDuckGo, the online protection company and remote-first team of 300+ on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. Founded in 2008 and profitable since 2014, annual revenue now exceeds $100m USD and millions use our browser on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, our search engine, and the DuckDuckGo subscription. Our culture of trust, inclusivity, and empowered project management underpins everything we do, where each team member takes full ownership of their projects, from scoping and execution to postmortem. If you're seeking end-to-end ownership of your work — you've come to the right place!
Working on the Backend Functional Team, you'll lead complex projects across key company-wide objectives. Using Perl (Version 5), Go, and Node.js, you’ll write pragmatic, performant, testable code that works consistently, and work on related projects. Recent projects include:
Implementing AI-assisted answers and integrating them into our Search product while maintaining our privacy-first approach
Delivering improvements to Duck.ai to help us make it a competitive AI chat alternative for both free and paying users
Implementing sophisticated data processing pipelines that maintain search relevancy
As a Senior Backend Engineer, you'll collaborate remotely with your peers and take responsibility for solving product issues impacting our all-in-one privacy solution, whether large or small. In time, you'll formally mentor other engineers, supporting their career growth and the growth of the Backend Team at DuckDuckGo.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience, primarily focused on backend systems that power consumer-facing products
• Product acumen to reason about technical tradeoffs in terms of user impact
• Familiarity with AI agent tooling: evaluation frameworks, RAG pipelines and prompt engineering
• A fundamental understanding of complex data structures and algorithms — you can develop and apply new solutions and confidently navigate and improve existing code.
• Data-driven analytical skills for decision-making, stakeholder alignment, and experiment-oriented delivery
• Solid project management abilities
• Excellent written and verbal communication to validate and articulate decisions
• Previous experience leading and mentoring experienced engineers, supporting their career goals, and unlocking their potential.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex projects across key company-wide objectives.
• Write pragmatic, performant, testable code that works consistently
• Collaborate remotely with your peers and take responsibility for solving product issues impacting our all-in-one privacy solution, whether large or small.
• Formally mentor other engineers, supporting their career growth and the growth of the Backend Team at DuckDuckGo.

Benefits

• stock options
• Eligibility for company-sponsored health benefits is limited to team members based in the United States.
• paid parental leave
• office setup
• co-working allowances

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed