Senior Software Engineer (Backend)
About The Position
Respondology is the leader in AI-powered social comment moderation. We are now expanding our best-in-class AI technology to enable brands to listen and respond to people in their social communities. With over 500 brands on its platform reaching 2 billion people per month, Respondology is modernizing social marketing, while eradicating hate speech from social media. #TechnologyForGood. Respondology is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to build and scale API services powering our Respond and Discover products. In this role, you'll develop RESTful APIs, optimize database performance, and integrate AI-powered features that help brands manage millions of social media comments. You'll work on high-traffic systems requiring sub-second response times while maintaining reliability at scale. If you're excited about performance optimization, clean API design, and solving complex technical challenges, we'd love to hear from you!
Requirements
- Minimum 4 years of professional software engineering experience
- Minimum 3 years proven experience with Python backend development (FastAPI, Flask, or Django)
- Minimum 2 years working with PostgreSQL or other relational databases
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, related degree, or equivalent work experience. If you have a four-year degree, that's great; we care more about your past experience and ability to do the job, so please apply even if you don't have a degree”
- Strong understanding of RESTful API design principles and best practices
- Experience with query optimization, indexing strategies, and database performance tuning
- Proven ability to debug complex production issues and identify root causes
- Experience with automated testing (unit, integration, end-to-end)
- Strong communicator and team collaborator
- Demonstrated ability to take ownership of projects, work independently, and deliver within deadlines
Nice To Haves
- Experience with Ruby on Rails
- Experience with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch
- Familiarity with AI/LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) and prompt engineering
- Experience with AWS services (ECS/Fargate, RDS, S3, SQS/SNS)
- Background in APM tools and observability (we use DataDog)
- Experience with queue-based background processing (Sidekiq, Kafka, Celery)
- Knowledge of OAuth, API authentication, and security best practices
- Experience optimizing high-traffic APIs (1000+ req/sec)
- Understanding of database replication, read replicas, and connection pooling
- Experience working at a rapidly-growing tech startup
Responsibilities
- Build and maintain RESTful APIs for our Respond and Discover products using FastAPI/Python and Ruby on Rails
- Design and optimize database schemas, queries, and indexes for PostgreSQL and OpenSearch/Elasticsearch
- Analyze and improve API response times, focusing on sub-second performance for high-traffic endpoints
- Integrate with OpenAI APIs and optimize prompt engineering for AI-powered comment responses
- Debug production issues, conduct root cause analysis, and implement preventive solutions
- Write comprehensive tests and participate in code reviews to maintain high code quality
- Collaborate with frontend engineers and product managers to deliver features end-to-end
- Monitor system performance using DataDog and respond to alerts
Benefits
- We have a values-led culture with team members who have your back.
- We support 100% remote employment or you may come into our beautiful offices if you're near Boulder, CO—dogs welcome.
- We understand the importance of a healthy work-life balance through providing flexible work arrangements, as well as a Flex PTO plan with generous holidays including a reduced schedule between Christmas and New Year's.
- We offer comprehensive and competitive benefits to support employee and family well-being including generous family leave policies, life insurance and supplemental insurance options.
- We provide matching traditional and Roth 401k, fully vested from day one.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
