Backend Data Engineer

Summary

Ruya AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company building AI-native intelligent software for sovereign institutions. They are seeking a Backend Data Engineer to build and maintain backend services that connect various systems and ensure the reliability and scalability of their data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain services using Python/FastAPI/TypeScript/Express
• Build secure REST APIs, SSE streams, and WebSocket-based features
• Own PostgreSQL schemas, migrations, transactions, and query performance
• Support OIDC/JWT authentication and resource-scoped RBAC
• Integrate external data providers and handle authentication, pagination, rate limits, schema variance, and failure states
• Define stable, documented contracts for frontend and AI consumers
• Build unit, contract, and database-backed integration tests
• Instrument services with structured logging and diagnose production failures across APIs, databases, authentication, and external dependencies using tools such as Sentry, Langfuse, or alternatives
• Collaborate with frontend and AI engineers throughout feature development and release

Skills

• Strong production experience with Python/FastAPI/TypeScript/Express
• Strong PostgreSQL knowledge, including schema design, migrations, transactions, and performance analysis
• Experience with OAuth/OIDC, JWT validation, and authorization
• Understanding of concurrency, idempotency, retries, timeouts, and distributed failure modes
• Experience designing and testing stable service contracts
• A security-conscious approach to input validation, credentials, sensitive data, and logging
• Experience using logs, traces, and error monitoring to diagnose production issues
• Clear communication and effective collaboration across engineering disciplines
• Python, FastAPI, Pydantic, or advanced asyncio
• Snowflake, ClickHouse, or another analytical data platform
• External API and data-provider integrations
• Geospatial data, entity resolution
• Graph-oriented data modeling
• PostgreSQL-backed graph persistence or NetworkX
• Containerized and distributed service environments
• GCP or AWS
• Durable background jobs or workflow systems such as Temporal
• Equivalent experience with comparable frameworks and infrastructure is welcome

Qualifications

Must Haves

• Strong production experience with Python/FastAPI/TypeScript/Express
• Strong PostgreSQL knowledge, including schema design, migrations, transactions, and performance analysis
• Experience with OAuth/OIDC, JWT validation, and authorization
• Understanding of concurrency, idempotency, retries, timeouts, and distributed failure modes
• Experience designing and testing stable service contracts
• A security-conscious approach to input validation, credentials, sensitive data, and logging
• Experience using logs, traces, and error monitoring to diagnose production issues
• Clear communication and effective collaboration across engineering disciplines

Nice to Haves

• Python, FastAPI, Pydantic, or advanced asyncio
• Snowflake, ClickHouse, or another analytical data platform
• External API and data-provider integrations
• Geospatial data, entity resolution
• Graph-oriented data modeling
• PostgreSQL-backed graph persistence or NetworkX
• Containerized and distributed service environments
• GCP or AWS
• Durable background jobs or workflow systems such as Temporal
• Equivalent experience with comparable frameworks and infrastructure is welcome

Benefits

• Employees (and their eligible dependents) can enroll in medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Commuter benefits
• Relocation assistance
• Paid time off built into the end of each year (subject to team and business needs) and based on location
• A supportive leave-of-absence program, including time off for military service and medical events