Sr. Backend Software Engineer

Respondology is the AI-powered social engagement platform that modernizes how social marketers moderate, listen to, and respond to comments at scale. 

The world’s top brands rely on Respondology to transform comment sections into community, commerce, and competitive intelligence. Fast to deploy and easy to use, our customers engage with over 2 billion collective followers every month.

Respondology is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to build and scale API services powering our Respond and Discover products. In this role, you'll develop RESTful APIs, optimize database performance, and integrate AI-powered features that help brands manage millions of social media comments. You'll work on high-traffic systems requiring sub-second response times while maintaining reliability at scale. If you're excited about performance optimization, clean API design, and solving complex technical challenges, we'd love to hear from you!

A day in the life:

• Build and maintain RESTful APIs for our Respond and Discover products using FastAPI/Python and Ruby on Rails
• Design and optimize database schemas, queries, and indexes for PostgreSQL and OpenSearch/Elasticsearch
• Analyze and improve API response times, focusing on sub-second performance for high-traffic endpoints
• Integrate with OpenAI APIs and optimize prompt engineering for AI-powered comment responses
• Debug production issues, conduct root cause analysis, and implement preventive solutions
• Write comprehensive tests and participate in code reviews to maintain high code quality
• Collaborate with frontend engineers and product managers to deliver features end-to-end
• Monitor system performance using DataDog and respond to alerts
  

Here's what you need to get our attention:

• Minimum 4 years of professional software engineering experience
• Minimum 3 years proven experience with Python backend development (FastAPI, Flask, or Django)
• Minimum 2 years working with PostgreSQL or other relational databases
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, related degree, or equivalent work experience. If you have a four-year degree, that's great; we care more about your past experience and ability to do the job, so please apply even if you don't have a degree”
• Strong understanding of RESTful API design principles and best practices
• Experience with query optimization, indexing strategies, and database performance tuning
• Proven ability to debug complex production issues and identify root causes
• Experience with automated testing (unit, integration, end-to-end)
• Strong communicator and team collaborator
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership of projects, work independently, and deliver within deadlines
  

Here's what will make us call you for sure:

• Experience with Ruby on Rails
• Experience with OpenSearch or Elasticsearch
• Familiarity with AI/LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) and prompt engineering
• Experience with AWS services (ECS/Fargate, RDS, S3, SQS/SNS)
• Background in APM tools and observability (we use DataDog)
• Experience with queue-based background processing (Sidekiq, Kafka, Celery)
• Knowledge of OAuth, API authentication, and security best practices
• Experience optimizing high-traffic APIs (1000+ req/sec)
• Understanding of database replication, read replicas, and connection pooling
• Experience working at a rapidly-growing tech startup

Compensation:

$120,000 - $155,000 DOE, plus bonus and equity

Location: 

This is a 100% remote role. Must be willing to travel to Boulder, CO approximately twice per year for on-site work with your team–and fun!

And if we haven't convinced you yet, here is why you'll want to be part of our team:

• We have a values-led culture with team members who have your back.
• We support 100% remote employment or you may come into our beautiful offices if you're near Boulder, CO—dogs welcome.
• We understand the importance of a healthy work-life balance through providing flexible work arrangements, as well as a Flex PTO plan with generous holidays including a reduced schedule between Christmas and New Year's.
• We offer comprehensive and competitive benefits to support employee and family well-being including generous family leave policies, life insurance and supplemental insurance options.
• We provide matching traditional and Roth 401k, fully vested from day one.

COME AS YOU ARE: your gender, your gods, your sex life, your skin color or your big shot uncle don't make a difference here. Respondology is a progressive and open-minded meritocracy. If you're smart and good at what you do, come as you are.