AWS Backend Lead
Location: Remote / Hybrid
Experience Level: Lead (10+ years)
Summary
Backend Lead responsible for designing and building cloud-native, event-driven data and analytics services on AWS, with a focus on serverless application development, ETL pipelines, and enabling self-service analytics and reporting in Amazon QuickSight. The engineer will work closely with data, analytics, and product teams to deliver reliable, scalable data services and BI capabilities.
Core Responsibilities
- Design and develop backend services and data APIs and other serverless components to support analytics and application workloads.
- Build and operate event-driven architectures that integrate S3, EventBridge, SNS/SQS, Lambda, Step Functions, and AWS Glue for near real-time and batch ETL workloads powering QuickSight dashboards and authoring.
- Implement robust ETL and data integration pipelines using AWS Glue (jobs, workflows, crawlers) to load, transform, and curate data in Amazon Redshift and the broader data warehouse environment.
- Model, optimize, and manage data structures (star/snowflake schemas, partitioning, distribution/sort keys) in Amazon Redshift and related data stores for performant SQL and BI queries.
- Enable and support Amazon QuickSight reporting and authoring, including data preparation, semantic modeling, row-level security, and performance tuning for dashboards and analyses.
- Apply big data analytics best practices for scalable storage and compute (e.g., S3-based data lakes, columnar formats like Parquet, pushdown, partition pruning).
- Design and implement monitoring, logging, and alerting for event-driven and serverless workloads using CloudWatch, X-Ray, and related services.
- Collaborate with data engineers, data scientists, and product teams to translate business and AI/analytics requirements into technical designs and working solutions.
- Contribute to architecture decisions, design reviews, and AWS best-practice adoption (security, IAM, networking, cost optimization, reliability).
- Mentor other engineers in serverless, data, and AI application patterns, coding standards, and cloud-native design.
Requirements:
- Strong hands-on experience (10+ Years) building applications and services on Amazon Web Services (AWS), ideally in a cloud application architect or backend engineer capacity.
- Advanced proficiency in Python for backend development, ETL, and automation (including use within AWS Lambda and AWS Glue jobs).
- Proven experience with serverless computing on AWS, including Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, and event-driven integration patterns.
- Solid experience designing and maintaining ETL pipelines and data workflows using AWS Glue (jobs, workflows, and crawlers) and related data integration tooling.
- Strong SQL skills and experience working with analytical databases and data warehouses, especially Amazon Redshift.
- Practical knowledge of data warehousing concepts (dimensional modeling, fact/dimension design, slowly changing dimensions, data partitioning, and indexing).
- Experience with big data analytics workloads on AWS (S3-based data lakes, Parquet/ORC, Redshift Spectrum, Athena, or similar).
- Hands-on experience with Business Intelligence (BI) and data visualization tools, with a preference for Amazon QuickSight (dataset design, dashboards, security).
- Understanding of cloud infrastructure fundamentals (VPC, subnets, networking, IAM, encryption, security best practices) in AWS.
- At least one relevant AWS certification (e.g., Solutions Architect, Data Analytics, Developer, or similar) or equivalent practical expertise.
We offer you a competitive total rewards package, continuing education & training, and tremendous potential with a growing worldwide organization.
DISCLAIMER:
Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities of this job to other entities; including but not limited to subsidiaries, partners, or purchasers of Alight business units.
Skills Required
- 10+ years hands-on experience building applications and services on AWS
- Advanced proficiency in Python for backend development, ETL, and automation
- Proven experience with serverless computing on AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions) and event-driven patterns
- Solid experience designing and maintaining ETL pipelines and data workflows using AWS Glue (jobs, workflows, crawlers)
- Strong SQL skills and experience with analytical databases and data warehouses, especially Amazon Redshift
- Practical knowledge of data warehousing concepts (dimensional modeling, SCDs, partitioning, distribution/sort keys)
- Experience with big data analytics on AWS (S3 data lakes, Parquet/ORC, Redshift Spectrum, Athena)
- Hands-on experience with BI and data visualization tools, preference for Amazon QuickSight (dataset design, dashboards, security)
- Understanding of cloud infrastructure fundamentals in AWS (VPC, subnets, networking, IAM, encryption, security best practices)
- At least one relevant AWS certification (Solutions Architect, Data Analytics, Developer) or equivalent practical expertise
Alight Solutions Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Alight Solutions and has not been reviewed or approved by Alight Solutions.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Leave offerings are described as generous, including multiple vacation weeks alongside wellness days, floating holidays, and paid holidays. Time-off flexibility is frequently positioned as a meaningful part of the overall rewards package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement benefits are framed as a notable strength, anchored by a 401(k) match structure and an additional retirement account contribution once eligible. Day-one participation and the employer contribution design are presented as differentiators versus many entry-level packages.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Wellbeing perks are positioned as a real addition to total rewards, including dedicated wellness days and mental health support such as premium access to Calm. Remote-work enablement is also reinforced through company-provided equipment, which reduces out-of-pocket setup costs.
Alight Solutions Insights
What We Do
Alight is a leading cloud-based human capital technology and services provider that powers confident health, wealth and wellbeing decisions for 36 million people and dependents. Our Alight Worklife® platform combines data and analytics with a simple, seamless user experience. Supported by our global delivery capabilities, Alight Worklife is transforming the employee experience for people around the world. With personalized, data-driven health, wealth, pay and wellbeing insights, Alight brings people the security of better outcomes and peace of mind throughout life’s big moments and most important decisions. Learn how Alight unlocks growth for organizations of all sizes at alight.com.






