Senior Backend Software Developer

This role is part of the Jobright Direct Hiring Network, where top companies like Cresta AI, Plaud, Mercor, OpenArt, and 1,500+ others hire top talent directly through our platform. This is not a mass job posting. Only select, high-signal candidates are invited and recommended directly to hiring teams Hiring Company: ZENDA, LLC One-liner: ZENDA is a SaaS collaboration platform focused on process intelligence and operational resilience. Salary: $150K/yr - $240K/yr Why Join Us: Role Responsibilities • Design and ship scalable APIs and backend services in Node.js (Nest.js) and Python (FastAPI) • Architect and evolve a distributed, event-driven microservices ecosystem with Kafka at its core • Contribute directly to product features — not just the plumbing • Design and own our cloud infrastructure using Terraform on AWS • Operate and scale Kubernetes environments with an emphasis on reliability, performance, and security • Build monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing systems that make production debuggable and resilient • Establish the standards the rest of the team builds on top of • Build the infrastructure that makes AI real in production: pipelines, agent frameworks, data processing systems, and model integrations • Partner with product and data teams to move fast without cutting corners on reliability or scale • Own the internal platform — CI/CD pipelines, local dev environments, deployment workflows, and the tooling that lets engineers focus on building instead of fighting their setup • Make the developer experience a competitive advantage • Lead critical backend initiatives from design to delivery • Drive architectural reviews • Mentor engineers through hard problems • Raise the bar on quality, pragmatism, and ownership across the team Qualitications Required • 5+ years building and operating production-grade backend and distributed systems • Deep hands-on experience with Node.js (TypeScript) and/or Python • Strong grasp of microservices, event-driven architecture, and message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar) • Experience building CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and cloud-native systems • Proficiency with Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS • Solid data modeling across relational and/or NoSQL systems • Experience with AI or data pipelines, automations, or ML-enabled systems • Comfort operating across the full stack — from infrastructure to backend to data • Strong plus: familiarity with modern AI tooling — LLMs, embeddings, agent architectures. This space is moving fast and we want people who are excited by that, not intimidated • We’re looking for someone with a genuine ownership mindset — someone who identifies gaps and fills them, leads without being asked, and cares about outcomes more than job titles • Clear communication and cross-functional collaboration matter here as much as technical depth