Director of Backend Engineering

Description

The company is building a music technology platform that combines album sales, streaming, fan commerce, and royalty participation, with the aim of changing how artists earn from their music and how fans take part in the music economy.

This is a full-time, hands-on Director of Backend Engineering role focused on AWS architecture and cloud cost optimization. You will write production backend code yourself, not only manage others.

The role reports to the Head of Engineering and is part of a founding engineering team at an early-stage company.

Responsibilities

• Write, build, test, debug and deploy production backend code yourself.
• Design and build backend APIs, services, business logic and database integrations.
• Build backend features for music streaming, album purchases, fan accounts, artist dashboards, royalty participation and transaction processing.
• Develop secure, scalable REST and GraphQL APIs.
• Improve the performance, architecture and maintainability of existing backend systems.
• Set up automated testing, code reviews and continuous integration.
• Work with iOS and frontend engineers to ship new product features.
• Manage and improve the company's AWS backend infrastructure.
• Design and deploy cloud services using suitable AWS technologies.
• Improve database efficiency, server performance, scalability and availability.
• Set up monitoring, logging, automated backups and disaster recovery procedures.
• Build and maintain reliable CI/CD deployment pipelines.
• Maintain security standards and infrastructure access controls.
• Find and act on opportunities to lower AWS operating costs across databases, compute, storage, API operations and CDN delivery.
• Remove unnecessary cloud spend and make infrastructure more efficient.
• Set up AWS cost monitoring, budgets, forecasting and automated alerts.
• Design backend systems that scale cost-effectively as platform usage grows.
• Own backend technical delivery and infrastructure operations.
• Define engineering standards, documentation and development processes.
• Mentor engineers as the technical team grows.
• Stay hands-on with coding and technical problem-solving.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional backend software engineering experience.
• Expert coding skills in one or more modern backend languages, plus proficiency in the company's existing backend stack.
• Extensive hands-on experience building and running production applications on AWS.
• Deep knowledge of databases, distributed systems, API development and backend architecture.
• A track record of independently taking complex backend features from concept to production.
• Demonstrated AWS cost optimization work with measurable results.
• Strong experience in backend security, infrastructure automation, CI/CD and performance optimization.
• Experience supporting high-traffic consumer platforms.
• Preferred: experience with music technology, media streaming, fintech, digital commerce, financial ledgers or royalty management systems.
• You should be a technical leader who can spot an architectural problem, work in the codebase, write the fix, deploy it safely and make it run efficiently on AWS.
• You need strong backend coding skills alongside cloud architecture skills and a strong focus on cost.
• Candidates whose background is mainly project management, IT administration or infrastructure alone will not be a fit.
• Equity participation may be offered, subject to agreed terms, company approvals and vesting arrangements.
• The company wants someone who cares about shaping the business as well as the technology, and who can help set the direction of a company aiming to change the global music economy.
• As an early technical leader you can shape core architecture, contribute to long-term product strategy and help drive growth.
• Emerging music technology company building a new model for music distribution, monetization and fan participation.
• You will work directly with senior leadership, own critical platform infrastructure and help shape the technical foundation of a company that could define its category.

Conditions

Full-time.

Reports to the Head of Engineering.

The company is building a new kind of music technology that brings together album sales, streaming, fan commerce and royalty participation.

The platform is meant to change how artists make money from their music and how fans take part.

The role is hands-on first, not a management-only position. You will personally design, build, deploy and maintain production backend systems while overseeing and optimizing AWS infrastructure.

You must be an excellent backend engineer first, with deep practical experience in AWS infrastructure, database engineering, scalability and cloud cost optimization.

You will work closely with the Head of Engineering to build new platform features, improve existing backend systems and keep the platform secure, efficient, reliable and scalable.