Top Backend Engineer Jobs in Los Angeles, CA

Design, implement, operate, and improve highly available backend services and distributed systems at significant scale. Collaborate across teams to deliver product solutions, test and debug code, and promote availability, scalability, operational excellence, security, and cost management. Investigate incidents, provide technical leadership, and use AI-assisted engineering workflows while maintaining production-quality standards.

Lead technical strategy and execution for foundational Trust and Safety systems supporting consumer risk and credit reporting. Design and operate highly available backend systems, improve reliability and monitoring, establish engineering standards, guide complex cross-functional initiatives, and mentor engineers. The role involves ownership of system architecture, technical planning, operational readiness, code quality, and team development.

Build and launch backend identity decisioning systems that validate consumer identity and satisfy KYC regulations. Collaborate with Product, Compliance, Auth, Fraud, Analytics, and engineering teams; decompose projects, write tested and extensible code, monitor system metrics, support availability and on-call operations, debug code, participate in reviews, and contribute to technical decisions and team development.

Build scalable backend services and infrastructure for mobile and web products. Design secure RESTful APIs, architect high-performance systems, apply engineering best practices, estimate and track Agile tasks, mentor teammates, collaborate with clients and engineers, and take ownership of technical solutions.

Design, build, and improve scalable backend systems that collect hard-to-access OSINT; build pipelines and ETL for messy data; collaborate with product and mission teams; mentor engineers and ensure reliable data delivery for DoD workflows.

Design and validate DFT architectures for mission-critical ASICs, including TAP/JTAG, IJTAG, Boundary Scan, MBIST, scan compression, ATPG, and silicon debug. Integrate DFT features into chip design flows, optimize test coverage, develop verification artifacts, support timing and bring-up activities, and collaborate with internal teams and external partners on interfaces and security requirements. The role is fully onsite, with occasional travel and after-hours meetings during critical milestones.

Lead the technical direction and architecture of the Foundations platform team, owning authentication, authorization, SSO, secrets management, tenancy, and core platform services. Design APIs, drive services through launch, make technical decisions, establish engineering standards, and mentor engineers without formal management authority. Partner with engineering and product leaders to align execution with priorities.

Build reusable backend platforms and developer-facing tooling for performance testing, analysis, reporting, and AI-assisted engineering workflows. Enable service teams to independently incorporate performance testing into development and CI workflows through self-service capabilities, documentation, templates, diagnostics, and guidance. Partner with engineering teams, influence adoption, generalize solutions, and provide expertise on complex performance challenges.

Design and implement backend services, modernize legacy systems into microservices, ensure strong testing and production observability, and collaborate with Product and Engineering teams. The role requires independent project ownership, strong system design, AI-assisted development using tools such as Claude or Cursor, effective communication with nontechnical stakeholders, and adaptability in an ambiguous, fast-changing environment.

Leads cross-team backend initiatives and technical architecture for GitLab’s Core DevOps platform. Responsibilities include modernizing a monolith, establishing service, API, data, security, testing, and observability standards, guiding Go and Kubernetes practices, supporting Rust adoption, participating in incident response, mentoring engineers, reducing technical debt, and advancing AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Design, implement, and maintain scalable, secure, high-performance backend systems and public-facing APIs. Collaborate with Product and Data Science teams, lead initiatives improving efficiency and system performance, and support customer satisfaction. Work may involve distributed systems, pricing engines, identity management, authentication, authorization, API versioning, deprecation, and rate limiting.

Designs, builds, and scales backend services and integrations for payments, billing, identity, and partner connectivity. Sets technical vision and architecture for distributed systems, leads cross-team delivery, manages production rollouts, builds fault-tolerant services and data pipelines, and mentors engineers. The role partners with product, design, and engineering teams to deliver frequent, reliable improvements for Flex’s rent payment platform.

Design, build, and scale backend services and integrations for payment, billing, identity, and partner systems. Own API scoping, design, implementation, deployment, and production operations with minimal oversight. Build fault-tolerant systems, data pipelines, and scalable architectures while collaborating with product, design, engineering, and external partners. Contribute to reliability monitoring, observability, automation, technical standards, and mentoring in a distributed team.

Build and scale backend data platforms and services for real-time loan origination and financial reporting. Lead quarterly delivery, guide engineers, define technical plans, collaborate with product and design partners, improve reliability and operational practices, monitor service metrics, participate in on-call support, uphold engineering quality standards, and mentor team members. The role requires developing highly available distributed systems and scalable data pipelines using technologies such as Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Kubernetes, Spark, and Airflow.

Build and operate Go-based automation for PostgreSQL provisioning, configuration, upgrades, failover, scaling, and decommissioning at GitLab.com scale. Develop a PostgreSQL-as-a-service platform, integrate cloud infrastructure and infrastructure-as-code tooling, improve database performance and reliability, and create safe upgrade automation. The role includes production ownership, architecture leadership, code reviews, documentation, cross-team collaboration, mentorship, and using AI agents in engineering workflows.

Design, develop, launch, and maintain scalable backend systems and APIs used by merchant and partner integrations. Collaborate with engineers and stakeholders, balance speed with system quality, debug code, conduct code reviews, and write tested, extensible software. The role requires experience with distributed systems, Python or Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes, along with strong communication and ownership of professional growth.

Develop and maintain SpaceX’s core test infrastructure framework and applications for production testing, integration testing, simulations, and flight systems. Improve software reliability, performance, safety, and user experience while collaborating with flight software engineers. Responsibilities include software design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, performance optimization, and solving complex engineering problems. The role is onsite and may require extended hours or weekends based on launch schedules.

Design, build, and operate backend infrastructure for an AI-driven knowledge platform. Responsibilities include knowledge graph hydration, ontology-based mapping, SPARQL and SQL optimization, data ingestion and ETL, relational and vector database management, REST API development, cloud deployment, containerization, monitoring, and data security. The role collaborates with ontologists, architects, and application teams while supporting enterprise-scale graph and semantic technology implementations.

Develop and operate backend systems supporting post-transaction processing for Affirm Card. Break down projects, write tested and extensible code, collaborate with product and engineering teams, monitor system health, troubleshoot issues, participate in on-call support, and contribute to code reviews and team development.

Design, build, and operate backend services for Bestow’s insurance platform using Python, Go, Java, and PostgreSQL. Collaborate on technical decisions, integrations, carrier onboarding, and scalable platform capabilities. Mentor engineers through reviews and pairing, improve production reliability and observability, participate in on-call support, and communicate technical decisions in a remote-first environment. Use agentic AI coding tools daily and help establish effective AI-assisted development practices.

Provides cross-team technical leadership for complex backend initiatives, modular architecture, monolith modernization, API and platform standards, production operations, and AI-assisted engineering adoption. Designs shared patterns for services, data, eventing, security, testing, observability, deployment, and reliability. Partners with Product and Engineering leadership, mentors engineers, participates in incident response, and drives technical strategy without formal authority.

Build, test, ship, and operate production backend features with minimal guidance. Design APIs, background jobs, integrations, data models, migrations, and bounded services while maintaining security, performance, observability, and reliability. Review code, improve automated testing, investigate production issues, address technical debt, participate in operational support, and collaborate asynchronously with product, frontend, infrastructure, and security teams. Use AI coding tools responsibly by validating and correcting generated output.

Owns delivery of backend money movement and card ledger systems, leading engineers through complex problems and ambiguity. Collaborates with product, design, analytics, and engineering stakeholders; defines scalable technical solutions; supports system availability, monitoring, on-call operations, code quality, and engineering standards. The role also includes mentoring and developing team talent while building highly available distributed systems for Affirm’s financial products.

Leads architecture and hands-on development of scalable backend systems and APIs supporting real-time applications. Owns the engineering lifecycle, writes high-performance code, establishes testing and reliability practices, resolves production issues, guides technical roadmaps, collaborates cross-functionally, and mentors engineers. The role requires expertise in object-oriented backend development, distributed cloud systems, automated testing, system monitoring, and technical leadership.

Build and maintain backend services and APIs, write unit tests, debug and optimize systems, support migration from Supabase to cloud, improve reliability, and integrate AI/RPA workflows while learning under senior mentorship.