Senior Software Engineer - Backend Systems

Valency Inc.

Job Overview

Location

Berkeley, CA

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Design, build, and own critical backend services including APIs, data pipelines, async workers, and the infrastructure that ensures reliable operation at scale
• Make sound architectural decisions and document trade-offs clearly to enable team learning and long-term maintainability
• Drive platform and reliability investments alongside feature development, ensuring foundational systems scale with growth
• Establish and uphold high standards for code quality, test coverage, and operational excellence across all backend systems
• Diagnose and resolve complex performance, reliability, and scalability issues; lead thorough post-mortems to prevent recurrence
• Design and maintain distributed systems resilient to failure using patterns like circuit breakers, retries, idempotency, and rate limiting
• Own the full lifecycle of services from design through deployment, including CI/CD pipelines, containerization with Docker and Kubernetes, and cloud infrastructure management
• Implement and iterate on observability practices including structured logging, metrics dashboards, distributed tracing, and alerting
• Contribute to infrastructure-as-code practices using Terraform, Pulumi, or similar tools and optimize cloud costs
• Design performant, well-normalized data models across relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and non-relational stores (Redis, MongoDB, DynamoDB)
• Build and maintain ETL/ELT workflows and integrations with third-party services and external APIs
• Apply caching strategies at CDN, in-memory, and application levels, understanding failure modes and trade-offs of each
• Work with message queues and event streaming platforms (Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ) to build decoupled, asynchronous architectures
• Apply secure coding practices by default, including input validation, secrets management, least-privilege access, and mitigation of common vulnerabilities
• Contribute to compliance efforts such as SOC 2 and GDPR by aligning engineering decisions with data privacy and auditability requirements
• Be the go-to engineer for hard problems — unblock teammates, provide crisp technical direction, and elevate quality during design reviews
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through code reviews, pairing sessions, and direct, constructive feedback
• Write Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and technical documentation that outlast individual projects
• Partner with Product and Design to scope work realistically, surface technical constraints early, and deliver with clarity
• Represent engineering in cross-functional conversations and earn influence through execution, not hierarchy
• Think in systems — prioritize long-term resilience over short-term feature delivery, ensuring systems remain robust at 10x scale
• Leave code, documentation, and systems measurably better than found, with a product mindset that understands why work is being done, not just how
• Thrive in ambiguity of a fast-moving startup environment, knowing when to move quickly and when to slow down to get it right
• Prefer staying deeply in code and solving complex backend problems over transitioning into management, while retaining the capability to step into leadership if needed

🎯 Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in backend systems, APIs, databases, distributed architectures, and cloud infrastructure
• Strong command of at least one backend language (Python, Go, Java, Rust, or similar) and proficiency across major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Hands-on experience with relational databases (schema design, query optimization, indexing) and familiarity with non-relational or caching layers
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines
• Demonstrated ability to own and deliver complex, ambiguous projects end-to-end with minimal supervision
• Track record of mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction without formal authority
• Clear, direct communication skills — able to explain technical trade-offs to both engineers and product managers

🏖️ Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Meaningful equity in a company building something important from the ground up
• Hybrid work model: 3 days in person in Berkeley, CA, with option for 2 days remote
• Benefits package (health, dental, etc.)

Skills & Technologies

Python

JavaScript

TypeScript

Java

Backend

Senior

Remote

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Valency Inc.

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About Valency Inc.

Valency is a technology company focused on building advanced AI solutions for the life sciences industry. Their platform leverages cutting-edge machine learning and data analytics to accelerate drug discovery and development. By analyzing vast biological datasets, Valency aims to identify novel therapeutic targets, predict drug efficacy, and optimize clinical trial design. Their solutions empower pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and research institutions to bring life-saving treatments to market faster and more efficiently. Valency operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and computational chemistry, driving innovation in precision medicine and personalized healthcare.

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