MMD Services · 1 day ago
Principal Backend Engineer
United States
Contract
Remote
Lead/Staff
$70/hr - $110/hrMMD Services is modernizing a critical commerce platform and is seeking a Principal Backend Architecture Engineer to take full ownership of the backend technical vision. This role involves solving complex system problems, shaping long-term engineering strategy, and building scalable distributed services that support real-time customer experiences.
ConsultingLegal
Responsibilities
Define and own the architectural blueprint for a modern, modular backend built on cloud-native principles
Establish service boundaries, integration patterns, and communication strategies (REST, gRPC, GraphQL, event-driven messaging)
Lead the design of a platform that can support rapidly increasing traffic, scalability demands, and high availability requirements
Introduce architectural principles such as domain-driven design, API-first thinking, and distributed systems best practices
Design and implement backend services using Java, TypeScript, or Node.js with an emphasis on reliability, observability, and operational excellence
Develop performance-focused APIs, leveraging caching, asynchronous workflows, and concurrency strategies to reduce latency under heavy load
Guide the transition from legacy platforms to containerized, cloud-hosted microservices running on Kubernetes
Anticipate scaling needs by analyzing traffic patterns, bottlenecks, and system limits — and architect solutions before problems arise
Drive improvements related to SLAs, SLOs, SLIs, and golden signal monitoring to ensure customer-facing reliability
Build robust fault-tolerant patterns that support graceful degradation, high throughput, and rapid recovery
Act as a technical mentor and thought leader, raising the bar for backend engineering across the organization
Partner with cross-functional teams — from frontend to SRE to data engineering — to align architectural decisions with overall platform goals
Lead strategic initiatives that modernize engineering practices, improve deployment quality, and increase development velocity
Balance big-picture architecture with hands-on implementation, POC development, and production rollouts
Qualification
Required
Strong experience building and scaling distributed systems and event-driven architectures
Expertise with Java and Node.js/TypeScript in production environments
Hands-on cloud experience (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP also relevant)
Proficiency with Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, and cloud-native toolchains
Deep understanding of API design, service-to-service communication, caching layers, messaging systems, and database optimization
Has personally defined (not just contributed to) architectural strategy for high-scale platforms
Can clearly articulate tradeoffs (e.g., REST vs gRPC, sync vs async, monolith vs microservices)
Experience guiding engineering teams through modernization efforts, cloud migrations, or large-scale refactoring
Designed systems supporting high user traffic, high transaction volumes, or complex concurrency demands
Experienced with diagnosing performance issues using logs, tracing, profiling, dashboards, and distributed observability tools
Preferred
Experience in e-commerce, retail, healthcare platforms, or other customer-facing, transaction-heavy environments is highly advantageous
Company
MMD Services
MMD Services is an IT company providing career counseling services.
Founded in 2006
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageLeadership Team
Dan Olas
Director, Accounting & Finance Practice
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