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Backend Engineer

Location Remote (Global) Type Full-time Experience 4+ years Team Engineering Openings 2 positions

About the role

You’ve seen backends that nobody wants to touch: fragile, undocumented, held together by whoever wrote them last. This isn’t that. We’re hiring a Backend Engineer to own the services and APIs behind the products we ship, and to keep them simple, well-tested and a genuine pleasure to build against.

Because Externo is a service-based consulting company, you won’t maintain one codebase forever. You’ll design and build services across many clients and industries, from a payments flow one quarter to an AI-backed pipeline the next. You’ll own systems end to end, make the calls that matter, and be trusted to get them right. There are no layers of approval to engineer around here.

What you’ll do

  • Design and build the APIs and backend services our clients’ products run on, end to end.
  • Own the data models, auth and third-party integrations, from schema to shipped endpoint.
  • Write tested, observable, maintainable code, the kind the next person thanks you for.
  • Scale services thoughtfully as usage grows, so reliability is designed in, not bolted on later.
  • Partner with designers, frontend and product daily so the whole stack fits together and ships fast.
  • Work directly with clients to turn unclear requirements into systems that hold up in the real world.

Skills & tools

The toolkit you’ll reach for most. You don’t need every one on day one, but you should be fluent across the core.

Core skills
  • API design
  • Backend services
  • Data modeling
  • Auth & security
  • Testing
  • Observability
  • Scaling
  • Integrations
Tools
  • Node.js
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • REST / GraphQL
  • Docker
  • AWS / GCP
  • Git

What we’re looking for

  • 4+ years building backend systems that stayed up under real load.
  • Strong in Node.js and/or Python, with solid database and API design skills.
  • A pragmatic, test-driven approach: you ship, then you sleep.
  • Real care for security and reliability, treated as the job, not an afterthought.
  • You can defend a design decision with reasoning, not just habit.
  • You stay calm switching between clients, stacks and problems.

Nice to have

  • Experience with event-driven or distributed architectures.
  • Cloud and infrastructure familiarity (AWS / GCP, Docker, CI/CD).
  • Interest in AI-backed services, LLM features or agent workflows.
  • Consulting or agency experience shipping across multiple clients.

Show us your work

A portfolio isn’t required, but real proof helps. If you have a GitHub or services you’ve shipped, drop the link in the Resume or portfolio link field on the right. We actually read them.

Is this you?

We hire for a specific kind of mind: people who think differently, work out of the box, and would rather try the less obvious idea than the safe one. We stay small and senior on purpose, so everyone here carries real weight.

Please only apply if you genuinely see yourself in this: a curious, self-driven engineer whose work and values line up with ours. If that’s you, we’d love to meet you. If it isn’t, applying will only waste your time and ours, and we’d rather be honest about that up front.

About Externo

Externo is a service-based consulting company. Businesses bring us in as their outside team to design, build and ship digital and AI products that hold up in the real world, across strategy, UX, LLM features, agent workflows, data pipelines and web experiences. We’re senior, remote-first, and work embedded alongside our clients. Get to know us on our About page, see the services we offer, or read the Externo blog.