Senior Backend Engineer

Location: Hybrid (Atlanta, GA or Toronto, CAN)

Type: Full-Time

About SketchDeck.AI

Construction is one of the world’s biggest, slowest-to-change industries, and we’re transforming it. At SketchDeck.AI, we build AI-powered tools that eliminate complexity, accelerate workflows, and help teams deliver at a level the industry has never seen before. Our vision is a built environment elevated by technology: more efficient, more accurate, and more human.

The Opportunity

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you’ll help build the core systems that power our platform. You’ll work with a tight backend team to deliver reliable Python services, strengthen infrastructure, and support ML and product teams as we scale. This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys solving real technical problems, improving performance, and shaping systems that must be fast, dependable, and clear. You’ll have deep ownership and the satisfaction of seeing your work immediately impact customers who rely on SketchDeck every day.

If you thrive in environments where the problems are complex, expectations are high, and your work shapes the direction of the company, you’ll feel at home here.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and Maintain Reliable Backed Services

• Develop, test, and maintain Python-based services and APIs (FastAPI/Flask/Django experience a plus).

• Design systems for jobs, long-running ML tasks, and dependency-based workflows.

• Improve performance through better database access (MongoDB), caching (Redis), and concurrency.

• Strengthen Infrastructure, DevOps, and CI/CD

• Build using Docker in development and production to maintain files/compose for dev, test, and prod.

• Own CI/CD pipelines (Bitbucket Pipelines) to keep deployments fast, safe, and consistent.

• Design, deploy and operate cloud workloads on AWS (or equivalent).

• Improve System Scalability and Reliability

• Implement robust automated testing (unit, integration, load) and ensure systems are safe to change.

• Improve monitoring, logging, and alerting to help the team detect issues early and maintain system health.

• Troubleshoot complex backend issues across distributed systems, queues, and long-running processes.

• Collaborate Across Backend, ML, and Product Teams

• Work with ML engineers to integrate model inference endpoints (OCR, object detection, etc.) into production workflows.

• Support frontend teams by delivering clean, well-documented APIs with predictable behavior.

• Participate in architecture discussions and contribute to decisions that affect scalability, maintainability, and security.

Skills & Experience

• Python Backend Expertise: Senior-level proficiency building scalable services, APIs, and asynchronous workflows using Python (FastAPI, Flask, or Django).

• Cloud & Infrastructure: Strong experience deploying and operating backend systems on AWS, using Docker, queues (SQS/RabbitMQ/Kafka), caching layers (Redis), and CI/CD pipelines.

• Distributed Systems: Skilled in designing reliable, performant systems involving job orchestration, long-running tasks, concurrency, and microservice patterns.

• Data & Storage: Proficiency with databases (MongoDB or similar), performance optimization, and clean data access patterns.

• Engineering Quality: Strong debugging, testing (unit/integration), and observability practices with clear communication and cross-functional collaboration.

SketchDeck.AI’s Values

• Focus on What Matters. Prioritize high-impact actions aligned with our mission and OKRs.

• Own the Outcomes. Embrace single-threaded ownership and drive meaningful outcomes by taking full responsibility for your actions and contributions.

• Be Bold, Iterate Fast. Take calculated risks and rapidly experiment to learn and innovate.

• Earn Trust. Empower Others. Seek to raise your team’s average by fostering honesty, integrity, and collaboration while ensuring world-class quality.