Lead Backend Engineer

Content moderation runs around the clock, with reviewers in multiple time zones and languages. We started in 2012 and have grown to about 240 people. Core hours are 10 to 3, and the rest of the day is flexible.

Position summary

Canopylane Online is hiring for the Lead Backend Engineer position to build and run the APIs and services behind our web and mobile apps. This role is fully remote within the UK. Normal working hours, Monday to Friday. Most communication happens in Slack, with short video calls when needed.

Your responsibilities

• Design and build REST and gRPC APIs in Go, Java or Python.
• Document APIs in OpenAPI and keep the docs current.
• Review code for correctness, performance and failure handling.
• Containerize services with Docker and deploy them to Kubernetes or ECS.
• Tune slow queries, add indexes and read query plans.
• Instrument services with metrics, structured logs and OpenTelemetry traces.
• Handle on-call for services the team owns and lead incident follow-ups.
• Write integration and contract tests so API changes don't break consumers.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend development experience in a production environment.
• Clear written communication, including design docs.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, GCP or Azure services.
• Familiarity with Docker and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong SQL and relational data modelling skills.
• Comfort reading logs, metrics and traces to debug problems in production.

Nice to have

• Elasticsearch or OpenSearch.
• Kubernetes, including Helm charts.
• Prior work breaking up a monolith.

Benefits

• Private medical insurance.
• Workplace pension.
• 33 days holiday including bank holidays.
• Long service awards.
• Home working allowance.
• Employee assistance programme.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.

Successful applicants will be contacted within a week of the closing date.

Start: Within 30 days.

Demo job created on 11jobs for testing and demonstrations. It is not an actual opening at Canopylane Online.