Senior Backend Software Engineer

Job Description

The Senior Backend Software Engineer (C) role involves designing, developing, and optimizing high-performance backend systems in C, ensuring scalability, reliability, and adherence to best engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain robust and high-performance backend systems using the C programming language.
• Optimize existing code and system architecture to improve performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Ensure adherence to software engineering best practices, including code standards, architectural principles, and design patterns.
• Diagnose, debug, and resolve issues in production environments with a deep understanding of system internals.
• Take ownership of system reliability, including proactive monitoring and incident response.
• Mentor junior engineers, review code, and help establish strong engineering practices across the team.
• Develop unit and integration tests to ensure high-quality and resilient code.
• Continuously improve build, deployment, and testing automation pipelines to support rapid development and deployment cycles.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define technical solutions and ensure alignment with product and business goals. 

Skills & Experiences

• Bachelors or Masters Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 4+ years of professional experience in software development, with a strong focus on backend systems using C
• Deep knowledge of C programming, including memory management, pointers, multithreading, and system-level programming
• Solid understanding of software engineering principles, including OOP (in C-compatible patterns), TDD, CI/CD, and Agile methodologies.
• Experience with Linux/Unix system programming, including sockets, IPC, and multithreaded applications.
• Familiarity with profiling, debugging, and performance tuning tools such as gdb, valgrind, strace, perf, etc.
• Understanding of low-level system internals including the kernel, memory layout, and CPU architecture.
• Experience with microservices or modular architectures is a plus.
• Exposure to RESTful API design and interaction with backend services via protocols like HTTP, gRPC, or custom RPC mechanisms.
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and/or key-value stores like Redis.
• Familiarity with build systems and tools like Make, CMake, autotools, or similar.
• Experience in DevOps practices, automation scripts, and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) is a plus.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to handle low-level debugging in production systems.
• Proven ability to write clean, maintainable code with comprehensive documentation and test coverage.
• Self-motivated, with a strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a dynamic and fast-paced startup environment.
• Start-up experience or entrepreneurial mindset is highly desirable.