haozhang

Backend SDE

full_time

About this role

haozhang is hiring a Backend SDE to build reliable, scalable backend systems that power core product experiences. In this role, you will work closely with product and engineering partners to design services, ship features with high quality, and improve the performance, stability, and maintainability of our platform.

What you'll do

Design, build, and maintain backend services, APIs, and data pipelines that support core product functionality.
Translate product and business requirements into pragmatic technical designs and implementation plans.
Improve system reliability, scalability, observability, and performance across backend infrastructure and services.
Write clean, well-tested, maintainable code and participate in code reviews to uphold engineering quality.
Collaborate with frontend engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders to deliver end-to-end features.
Troubleshoot production issues, identify root causes, and implement fixes and long-term improvements.
Contribute to engineering best practices for deployment, monitoring, documentation, and operational excellence.

What we offer

The opportunity to work on meaningful backend problems with real product impact.
A collaborative team environment with room for ownership and technical growth.
Exposure to end-to-end product development and cross-functional decision-making.
A fast-paced setting where strong execution and engineering judgment are valued.

Requirements

Strong software engineering fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, and system design.
Hands-on experience building backend applications or distributed services in at least one modern programming language.
Solid understanding of API design, database fundamentals, and service-oriented architecture.
Experience writing production-quality code with appropriate testing, debugging, and performance optimization.
Ability to reason about scalability, reliability, and maintainability in backend systems.
Good communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across functions.
A practical, ownership-oriented mindset and the ability to deliver in a fast-moving environment.

Nice to have

Experience with cloud infrastructure, containerization, or orchestration platforms.
Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, caching systems, or message queues.
Familiarity with observability tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and incident response practices.
Experience supporting high-traffic or high-availability production systems.
Background working in product-focused startups or fast-scaling engineering teams.

Interview topics · ~45 min

Backend engineering fundamentals
System design and scalability
Coding quality and maintainability
Databases and data modeling
Reliability and debugging
Collaboration and ownership
Hosted by haozhang's AI interviewer · ~45 min