Lead Backend Engineer

Pavago is seeking a Lead Backend Engineer to take full ownership of the architecture and engineering of its systems end-to-end. This is a senior, hands-on role designed for a professional who enjoys working in an early-stage startup environment and is comfortable being the most experienced technical expert on the team. You will be responsible for balancing rapid execution with sustainable architectural designs, ensuring system reliability, and driving technical outcomes. ### Responsibilities - Design, build, and maintain a .NET 8.0 / C# backend utilizing Clean Architecture and Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles. - Own the codebase and architecture across more than 14 independently deployed microservices. - Deliver features, perform refactoring, and resolve system performance bottlenecks. - Design and operate production-grade AI pipelines using various LLM providers. - Optimize prompts and workflows for large-scale batch processing, personalization, and segmentation. - Manage AI provider rate limits, failover strategies, and costs. - Manage MySQL, Redis, and MongoDB in production. - Oversee bulk writes, caching strategies, event streams, and analytics pipelines while ensuring data consistency. - Manage Linux-based infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and service deployments. - Implement centralized logging, monitoring, and uptime tracking systems. - Proactively mitigate scalability and reliability risks. - Manage over 25 third-party API integrations. - Design retry and fallback strategies to ensure system stability when external providers fail. - Lead and mentor a small engineering team through code reviews and technical guidance. - Enforce engineering standards, best practices, and workflows. - Collaborate with the founder on technical strategy and product direction.