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Lead Backend Developer, AI Pods

Role overview

Qualifications

  • Proven backend engineering experience (5+ years) centered on microservices and distributed systems
  • Hands-on proficiency in Python to build high-performance backend services and cloud-native APIs
  • Working knowledge of AWS plus containerization with Docker and orchestration via ECS/EKS
  • Strong understanding of RESTful APIs and practical API design experience

Responsibilities

  • Design and build backend API services along with LLM orchestration layers
  • Own API contracts and service reliability end-to-end, ensuring AI edge cases fail gracefully
  • Integrate LLMs with disciplined systems engineering, including evaluation, observability, fallback handling, and cost awareness
  • Implement and maintain advanced RAG pipelines, covering document ingestion, chunking, embedding, and retrieval optimization

Key facts

Hard skills

About the company

EPAM Systems logo

EPAM Systems

  • IT Services & Consulting
  • XLarge
  • 10,001+
Since 1993, EPAM Systems, Inc. (NYSE: EPAM) has used its software engineering expertise to become a leading global provider of digital engineering, cloud and AI-enabled transformation services, and a leading business and experience consulting partner for global enterprises and ambitious startups. We address our clients’ transformation challenges by fusing EPAM Continuum’s integrated strategy, experience and technology consulting with our 30+ years of engineering execution to speed our clients’ time to market and drive greater value from their innovations and digital investments. We make GenAI real with our AI LLM orchestration, testing and engineering solutions, EPAM DIAL, EPAM EliteA™ and EPAM AI/RUN™, respectively. We deliver globally, but engage locally with our expert teams of consultants, architects, designers and engineers, making the future real for our clients, our partners and our people around the world. We believe the right solutions are the ones that improve people’s lives and fuel competitive advantage for our clients across diverse industries. Our thinking comes to life in the experiences, products and platforms we design and bring to market. Added to the S&P 500 and the Forbes Global 2000 in 2021 and recognized by Glassdoor and Newsweek as a Top 100 Best Workplace, our multidisciplinary teams serve customers across six continents. We are proud to be among the top 15 companies in Information Technology Services in the Fortune 1000 and to be recognized as a leader in the IDC MarketScapes for Worldwide Experience Build Services, Worldwide Experience Design Services and Worldwide Software Engineering Services. Learn more at www.epam.com.

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Job description

We are looking for a Lead Backend Developer to deliver secure, scalable AI-driven API services and agentic workflows for our AI Pods. You will connect language models to internal systems, vector databases, and external tools via orchestration frameworks, treating LLMs as distributed components. Responsibilities Design and build backend API services along with LLM orchestration layers Own API contracts and service reliability end-to-end, ensuring AI edge cases fail gracefully Integrate LLMs with disciplined systems engineering, including evaluation, observability, fallback handling, and cost awareness Implement and maintain advanced RAG pipelines, covering document ingestion, chunking, embedding, and retrieval optimization Develop and connect agent tools using LangChain, LangGraph, and potentially MCP (Model Context Protocol) Build dependable, reusable orchestration frameworks and logic for downstream developer consumption Ensure security, privacy, enterprise-grade observability, and test coverage across all backend workflows Contribute to architecture decisions and engineering standards within the pod Collaborate with frontend engineers, data engineers, and infrastructure teams Requirements Proven backend engineering experience (5+ years) centered on microservices and distributed systems Hands-on proficiency in Python to build high-performance backend services and cloud-native APIs Working knowledge of AWS plus containerization with Docker and orchestration via ECS/EKS Strong understanding of RESTful APIs and practical API design experience Solid grasp of secure coding practices, including strong auth/authz fundamentals English proficiency at B2 (Upper-Intermediate) level or higher Nice to have 2+ years of hands-on experience with AI SDKs (OpenAI, Anthropic/Claude, AWS Bedrock, or equivalent) in production Practical experience with vector databases (Amazon Kendra, OpenSearch), embedding strategies, and retrieval systems Hands-on experience with LangChain, LlamaIndex, or LangGraph Familiarity with AI evaluation tooling or real-time APM (LangSmith, Langfuse, Arize) Skills in React and TypeScript Experience deploying to EKS environments at scale Understanding of agent interoperability patterns (MCP) Knowledge of identity/security domain (IAM, CIAM) Flexibility to use secondary languages such as Java, Node.js, or Go

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