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# Senior Backend Developer, AI Systems (Remote)

- **Company:** The Ladders
- **Location:** United States (Remote available)
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $143,000 - $200,000
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Software Quality, Continuous Integration, Distributed Computing Environment, Distributed Systems, Fault Tolerance, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Google Cloud, Apache Spark, Reliability of Systems, Backend, Kubernetes, Apache Kafka
- **Published:** November 5, 2026
- **Apply:** https://arc.dev/remote-jobs/j/redirect/pwttsc69a7

## About the Role

* 5+ years of software engineering experience focused on distributed systems
 * Deep experience building and operating large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems
 * Strong software engineering skills, including system design and CI/CD practices
 * Proficiency in Python programming
 * Experience with distributed data processing frameworks such as Apache Spark
 * Familiarity with cloud providers, particularly Google Cloud Platform
 * Knowledge of modern distributed technologies such as Kubernetes and Kafka
 * Strong technical leadership and mentoring abilities

## Description

This role will shape the evolution of a high-scale personalization and recommendations platform through modern distributed backend architecture. You will partner closely with machine learning engineers and other technical stakeholders to turn business and model requirements into reliable, performant systems that can operate at scale. The position also carries ownership across design, delivery, and incident response, with a strong focus on engineering rigor, system resilience, and continuous improvement., * Lead the architectural evolution of the core recommendations pipeline to a modern distributed architecture

 * Design, build, and operate scalable backend services for personalization at scale
 * Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks and reliability risks
 * Collaborate with ML engineers to translate requirements into technical designs
 * Own key system components from architecture to incident response
 * Champion engineering best practices in system design and code quality
 * Mentor engineers and foster a culture of technical rigor and continuous improvement