Remote | Senior Backend Engineer — $50–$100/hour

24-Mag•New York, NY

5h•Remote

About The Position

This remote, independent-contractor consulting opportunity is for experienced Senior Backend Engineers contributing to an advanced AI training and reinforcement-learning environment project. The work involves creating realistic, reproducible environments that test advanced AI systems against production infrastructure challenges in system design, deployment, troubleshooting, security, scalability, and recovery. Prior AI experience is not required. The engagement is expected to require approximately 20 hours per week. Compensation is output-based, paid per task that meets project specifications; the displayed range is $50–$100 per hour, and task completion time may vary. Minimum weekly submission requirements apply, but the exact number of tasks is not specified. Work and evaluation standards may evolve with project needs. Screening includes an approximately 30-minute AI interview followed by hiring-manager review. Roles are typically filled within approximately 48 hours, with initial tasks expected approximately 24–48 hours after onboarding. Work must not use confidential or proprietary information belonging to any employer, client, institution, or other third party. The opportunity is available through 24-MAG LLC, which connects experienced professionals with remote consulting opportunities across technical, evaluation, and project-based workstreams. Application information may be processed for recruitment and opportunity matching under the company’s Privacy Policy.

Requirements

Strong professional backend-engineering experience.
Expertise in one or more of C++, Python, Rust, Go, Java, or JavaScript.
Strong practical experience with DevOps and cloud infrastructure.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation.
Demonstrated ability to architect, scale, and secure distributed systems.
Deep understanding of networking and Identity and Access Management.
Experience with message queues, durable storage, observability, and production diagnostics.
Strong knowledge of rolling deployments, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery.
Experience troubleshooting production-grade systems.
Ability to design deterministic tests and reproducible technical environments.
Strong technical documentation and communication skills.
Work must be completed without using confidential or proprietary information belonging to an employer, client, institution, or other third party.

Responsibilities

Design realistic technical environments involving backend services, distributed systems, networking, queues, and durable storage.
Create production-style scenarios for deployment, scaling, troubleshooting, and recovery.
Evaluate architecture for reliability, scalability, resilience, and operational correctness.
Incorporate realistic failure modes and infrastructure constraints, applying systems-design judgment across cloud environments.
Develop scenarios involving IAM, authentication, authorisation, permissions, and access control.
Work with CI/CD, infrastructure automation, rolling deployments, and operational workflows.
Incorporate observability, monitoring, and diagnostic requirements.
Design fault-tolerance and disaster-recovery scenarios, and identify common production configuration, networking, and security failures.
Build reproducible environments with deterministic validation.
Create golden reference solutions and objective acceptance criteria.
Develop defective variants that test troubleshooting and recovery skills.
Validate expected behaviour, failure conditions, and edge cases.
Document architecture, assumptions, operational flows, and technical trade-offs clearly.