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Principal Backend Engineer (Architect Track) - Remote

Novakid

Role overview

Qualifications

  • Hands-on backend architecture leadership with strong coding experience in Python (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery, Postgres, Redis)
  • Experience evolving monoliths toward modular, service-oriented architectures and defining geo-distributed service boundaries
  • Proficiency with cloud architecture on AWS (primary) and GCP for data/AI, including multi-region deployments and observability
  • Ability to trade off buy/build/assemble decisions, document tradeoffs, and communicate architecture choices clearly

Responsibilities

  • Own backend architecture standards and major technical decisions across teams, including API conventions, event-driven patterns, testing, observability, and deployment
  • Drive the path from monolith to modular backend with well-defined service blueprints and geo-distribution considerations
  • Design and optimize cloud infrastructure across AWS and GCP for high-load, real-time systems (live classes) with latency budgets and caching
  • Evaluate and select when to buy, build, or use no-code/low-code tools and POCs, delivering production-ready components and refactors

Key facts

Hard skills

AWS Cloud Services Microservices Python (Programming Language) Custom Attributes Code Refactoring Observability SQLAlchemy FastAPI Proof Of Concept (POC) Development High Availability Design Application Programming Interface (API) Data Caching Celery (Software) AI/ML Inference Capacity Planning Managed Services Production Code Low Latency Scalability Redis Build vs Buy Analysis Cloud Computing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Dev Testing Region Management Real-Time Operating Systems Data Infrastructure PostgreSQL Event-Driven Programming Deployment Project Database Cursor Cross-Functional Collaboration Architectural Design Engineering Documentation Hand Coding Decision Analysis Technical Leadership

Other skills

  • Decision Making
  • Research

About the company

Novakid logo

Novakid

E-Learning / EdTech

Novakid is a Series B EdTech startup ($41,5M raise) with double-digit revenue growth in 2023. This online English as a Second Language learning platform for children aged 4 to 12 has delivered over 15 million English lessons for kids since inception in 2017. This award-winning online English school offers one-to-one and group lessons with qualified and experienced teachers. Kids learn efficiently through full language immersion and fun games and activities, mastering English for academic and career success. The ability to master the English language from an early age is important for a child's future academic and career goals. Novakid complements school learning by giving kids a safe place for real-life English speaking practice, and the methodology is based on learning games - representing the new generation of online learning. Novakid has been recognised by a number of organisations across the world. In 2023, Novakid was included on the 2023 Inc 5000 list - position 105 of 5000, and is 1st in the Education category. In the same year, Novakid won the Best Digital Language Learning Product of the Year Award in the Digital Education Awards; was recognised as a finalist in the 2023 EdTech Digest Awards in the category of Best Language Learning Solution and Novakid was nominated as a finalist in the ‘Early Years’ category of the EdtechX Awards 2023. In 2022, Novakid was selected as the winner of the “Overall Language Learning Company of the Year” in the 2022 EdTech Breakthrough Awards. Novakid’s mission is to build a global community of young English learners designed to encourage deep and meaningful friendships across different cultures. Vacancies: https://hr.novakidschool.com/

Company details

Company typeScaleup
IndustryE-Learning / EdTech
Company size201 - 500

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Job description

Novakid is an online English platform for kids — 100,000+ students, 2,500+ teachers, 15+ countries. Live classes run around the clock across time zones, which sets the technical bar: low latency, high availability, and a backend that holds up at real scale.

We’ve built a working platform. The next chapter is making deliberate architectural choices about how it should evolve.

The role

We’re hiring a Principal Backend Engineer to take ownership of backend architecture as a hands-on technical leader. No direct reports. About half your time is in the code — reference implementations, critical components, refactors. The other half is the harder work: deciding what to build, what to buy, what to defer, and why.

Our backend today is a Python core (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Celery, Postgres, Redis), surrounded by services and event-driven flows, with a growing AI layer. It runs primarily on AWS, with GCP for data and AI workloads. There are real architectural questions to answer: how to evolve the monolith, how to set service boundaries, how to design for geo-distribution as we grow, and how to integrate AI without accumulating debt. We’re looking for someone who treats those questions seriously — researches before deciding, thinks in tradeoffs, writes things down.

What you’ll work on

  • Backend architecture standards and major technical decisions across teams

  • The path from monolith toward a more modular, service-oriented backend

  • Service blueprints: API conventions, EDA patterns, testing, observability, deployment

  • Cloud architecture across AWS (primary) and GCP, including multi-region and geo-distributed designs

  • High-load, real-time systems: live class infrastructure, latency budgets, caching, capacity

  • Buy vs. build vs. assemble — knowing when a managed service, a no-code tool (Retool, n8n), or an agentic-coding POC (Claude Code, Cursor) is the right call, and when it isn’t

  • Production code: components, refactors, POCs, and selected product-critical features

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MR

Marcus Rivera

Chief Revenue Officer

m.rivera@company.com
linkedin.com/in/marcusrivera
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