Backend / Platform Engineer

Why this role matters

You take responsibility for the server-side behaviour behind a focused product journey: who may act, what is stored and how a failure is recovered. Make decisions inspectable through small design notes, isolated tests and rehearsed recovery steps. Introduce services only after considering operational cost and ownership.

A typical working day

• Review data and API changes against permission, transaction and failure cases.
• Build small increments and investigate integration failures with frontend and QA.
• Maintain migration, backup and rollback notes; obtain approval before production actions.

Your responsibilities

• Own approved API contracts, PostgreSQL models, integrations and authorization boundaries.
• Implement observability, backups, idempotency and recovery procedures.
• Review generated code and coordinate controlled deployments with QA.
• Communicate progress and dependencies early; agree scope changes before taking on another workstream.

Ownership boundaries

Specialist security audits, 24-hour on-call and every brand's entire roadmap are not one person's default responsibility.

What you bring

• Demonstrated backend ownership, SQL transactions, HTTP and server-side authorization.
• Automated integration tests, secure secret handling and deployment troubleshooting.
• Ability to explain a failure and demonstrate recovery, not only a successful demo.

AI with judgment

Use agents for bounded implementation and test generation; validate migrations, permissions and external-service side effects manually.

Evidence and assessment

An API or integration with architecture notes, ownership details and a recovery example; sanitized code only.

A paid idempotent intake/queue exercise with safe failure handling and a review of access controls. Agree payment and a time cap before starting. Use fictional data, no live credentials and no free production work.

How we work

Remote-first with an agreed collaboration window with the Nigeria-based team. Physical sessions require an agreed location, notice and travel arrangements; weekly office attendance is not assumed. Eligibility, engagement type and availability are confirmed individually.

The work you can shape

Practical problems, visible ownership and collaboration across product, design and operations. Together we agree a focused scope and the evidence that will show it is working.

First 30 days

1. Days 1-5: inventory assigned services and explain one data journey and its access boundaries.
2. Days 6-15: deliver one small sandbox API change with duplicate, timeout and authorization checks.
3. Days 16-30: demonstrate recovery, resolve agreed high-risk findings and hand over release instructions; no unapproved production migration.