Senior Backend Engineer - AI Feature Innovation

About the Opportunity

At Contentful, we empower thousands of customers to manage content at scale with speed, flexibility, and precision. We are seeking experienced Senior Backend Engineers (f/m/d) to join our AI Feature Innovation team—a group dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI-driven content solutions.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will play a key role in architecting and developing scalable, high-performance backend services that power AI-driven features. You will focus on building robust APIs, integrating AI models, and designing backend systems that enable intelligent automation, personalization, and content augmentation within Contentful.

This role is perfect for an engineer with deep backend expertise who is passionate about AI-driven development, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures. You will work closely with fullstack engineers, product managers, designers, and AI specialists to design and implement AI-powered features that redefine intelligent content management.

What to Expect

• Architect & Develop AI-Enabled Services: Design and implement scalable, high-performance backend systems that power AI-driven features.
• AI Integration: Work closely with AI specialists to integrate AI models, APIs, and automation services into Contentful’s backend infrastructure.
• API & Service Development: Build and maintain robust, secure, and efficient APIs to support AI-powered features.
• Distributed Systems & Data Processing: Develop event-driven, asynchronous architectures to handle AI-powered content workflows at scale.
• Cloud & Infrastructure Scaling: Leverage Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure) to deploy, manage, and optimize backend services.
• Technical Leadership & Best Practices: Guide best practices in system design, code quality, testing, and performance optimization.
• Collaboration Across Teams: Work closely with frontend engineers, designers, AI specialists, and product managers to align backend capabilities with AI-powered feature development.
• Stay Ahead of AI Trends: Continuously explore emerging AI technologies and backend architectures, ensuring Contentful’s AI capabilities remain at the forefront of innovation.

What You Need to be Successful

Technical Expertise

• Backend Engineering Mastery: Deep expertise in Node.js (Express or Hapi), TypeScript, and backend software engineering best practices.
• Scalable API & Microservices Design: Proven experience in designing and implementing scalable, maintainable APIs.
• AI Enthusiasm & Integration: Passion for AI-driven innovation, with hands-on experience integrating AI/ML APIs, models, or services into real-world products.
• Cloud-Native Development:
• Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including serverless functions, managed AI services, and cloud-based APIs.
• Proficiency in Docker and Kubernetes for deploying and orchestrating backend services.

• Event-Driven & Asynchronous Systems: Experience building and maintaining event-driven architectures, leveraging message queues (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS) and background job processing.
• Performance & Security: Experience optimizing large-scale backend systems for high availability, scalability, and security.

Soft Skills & Leadership

• Problem-Solving & Innovation: Ability to break down complex technical challenges, identify scalable solutions, and drive backend architecture decisions.
• Technical Leadership: Proven experience mentoring engineers, establishing backend development best practices, and driving technical initiatives.
• Cross-Team Communication: Ability to articulate backend requirements and AI integration strategies to frontend engineers, AI specialists, and product teams.
• Agile & Fast-Paced Execution: Comfortable working in an iterative, fast-moving development environment, balancing short-term needs with long-term backend strategy.

Preferred:

• AI/ML Feature Development: Experience building AI-powered backend services, particularly in automated content generation, NLP, or personalization.
• Foundational AI Knowledge: Understanding of LLMs (GPT, BERT), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and AI-driven backend architectures.
• AI Ethics & Responsible AI Practices: Awareness of bias mitigation, fairness, and security considerations in AI-driven products.

What's in it for you?

• Join an ambitious tech company reshaping the way people build digital experiences
• Full-time employees receive Stock Options for the opportunity to share in the success of our company
• Fertility and family building benefits, including a lifetime reimbursable wallet to support your growing family.
• We value Work-Life balance and You Time! A generous amount of paid time off, including vacation days, sick days,  education days, compassion days for loss, and volunteer days
• Use your personal annual education budget to improve your skills and grow in your career
• Enjoy a full range of virtual and in-person events, including workshops, guest speakers, and fun team activities, supporting learning and networking exchange beyond the usual work duties 
• An annual wellbeing stipend to care for your physical, financial, or emotional health
• A monthly communication phone/internet stipend and phone hardware upgrade reimbursement.
• New hire office equipment stipend for hybrid or distributed employees. Get the gear you need to work at your best.

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