Senior Backend Engineer (API - Docker - Python) - PT - WW

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Senior Backend Engineer to lead the architectural transformation of our AI agent platform into a fully decoupled headless API service. In this role, you will be responsible for designing and building a highly scalable, performant and secure API layer that empowers developers to create intelligent applications with our state-of-the-art AI technologies. This is a hands-on position where you will define the API strategy, build the core platform components, and collaborate closely with our AI/ML, frontend and product teams to shape the future of our platform.

Key aspects of this role include:

• Defining the API strategy and architecture to enable a clean separation between the backend services and frontend UIs
• Building comprehensive REST and GraphQL APIs to expose the full functionality of the platform
• Implementing real-time data streaming capabilities via WebSocket and Pusher channels
• Integrating the APIs with our proprietary Eliza and ZerePy AI frameworks to support advanced natural language processing, generation, knowledge extraction and more
• Designing database schemas and data access patterns to ensure proper partitioning and isolation between different AI agents
• Implementing authentication, authorization and access control mechanisms to protect sensitive data and enforce usage limits
• Instrumenting the APIs with logging, metrics and tracing to monitor performance and usage
• Creating API documentation, SDKs and code samples to enable a delightful developer experience
• Collaborating with frontend engineers to design the optimal API contracts and payloads
• Working with the product and business teams to define the API roadmap and roll out new capabilities

Required Qualifications

• Professional experience building and operating production-grade, large-scale backend systems and API platforms
• Expert knowledge of API design principles, RESTful architectures, API gateways and management tools
• Proficiency in Python and at least one other language commonly used for building APIs (e.g. Go, Java, Scala, Node.js)
• Extensive experience with containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration frameworks like Kubernetes
• Deep understanding of data modeling, database design and query optimization techniques
• Solid experience with cloud platforms like AWS, GCP or Azure and their API management/serverless offerings

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI/ML powered APIs and integrating with NLP/NLU frameworks
• Knowledge of social media APIs like Twitter API, Farcaster API, Mastodon API
• Familiarity with real-time messaging technologies like WebSocket, MQTT, Pusher, etc.
• Experience with API documentation tools like Swagger/OpenAPI, Postman, readme.io
• Exposure to event-driven architectures and streaming platforms like Kafka, Kinesis, Pulsar
• BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience