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About Us:
The wholesale distribution sector is overdue for transformation, and Proton is at the forefront. Distributors play a vital role in the sale of nearly all physical goods, yet despite their economic importance, the industry has lagged behind technologically. Proton is changing that. Our AI-driven sales platform cuts through the complexities of managing millions of products, helping distributors better anticipate customer needs. Our mission is to bring modern technology to distribution, and the impact is clear: companies using Proton achieve a 10x ROI, speed up new‑hire onboarding, and build happier sales teams.

In 2022, we raised a $20M Series A from Felicis Ventures (backers of Twitch, Shopify, Opendoor, and more) and Battery Ventures. This year, our main focus is accelerating customer growth. If you thrive in a role where you can wear multiple hats, experiment, and continuously learn, now is a great time to join the Proton team.

The Role:
Proton is seeking a seasoned Senior Backend Engineer to join our rapidly expanding SaaS team. Reporting to the Director of Engineering, you will take a key role in shaping the technical development of Proton’s product and platform. You’ll work closely with the engineering team to build a scalable, customizable, high‑performing, and secure application.

We’re looking for someone with strong technical skills and a genuine curiosity for modern technologies, who can help us select and implement solutions that set our engineering organization up for long‑term success.

Proton partners with Oyster HR to hire international employees as full‑time, long‑term contractors.

The gross annual salary range for this role is 50,000 to 70,000 USD, depending on experience.

What you’ll do:
• Lead backend development for new features and help the Product team understand complexity and tradeoffs. Work across the full stack, taking features from concept to production and quickly delivering real value to customers.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams spanning software engineering, infrastructure, backend, frontend, and DevOps, offering architectural guidance to ensure our technology choices support future growth.
• Use your enterprise application experience to adapt our platform to the specific needs of large corporate clients.
• Apply your expertise in building reliable, high‑performance systems, contributing to architectural and data‑flow discussions end to end.

You’ll be a great fit if you:
• Have proven experience as a principal engineer or similar in a startup environment, with a strong focus on scalable SaaS products, and 7+ years building and deploying them.
• Bring 5+ years of backend engineering experience, ideally with Python or Go, though C# or Java are also acceptable.
• Have a history of making strong architectural decisions and delivering system improvements, with an emphasis on secure coding practices that meet enterprise requirements.
• Possess deep knowledge of cloud‑native technologies, including cloud platforms, databases, application performance, scalability, and security.
• Are naturally curious about emerging technologies, staying up‑to‑date on new frameworks and tools, and enjoy comparing solutions to determine the best fit for each use case.
• Have significant experience with enterprise applications.
• Communicate complex technical ideas clearly across diverse audiences.

Current Tech Stack
Backend:
• Elasticsearch and Redis as primary databases
• Active migration to SQL as the main database
• Python API service deployed on Kubernetes
• Daily pre‑computations handled with Airflow
• Machine learning
• Neural network‑based AI models
• Machine learning engineering focused on model experimentation, development, training, and deployment

Frontend:
• Vue.js 3 and Nuxt 3
• Migrating component frameworks from ElementPlus/iView to Vuetify
• Docker and Kubernetes for deployment
• GitHub Actions for CI

We have a robust tech stack in place, but we value developers who are passionate about learning and growing. If you don’t have experience with everything listed but are eager to learn, we’d love to hear from you.

Benefits:
• Competitive salaries and stock options, ensuring fair compensation and a sense of ownership
• Flexible scheduling that supports autonomy, responsibility, and asynchronous work
• Company‑funded off‑sites twice per year for collaboration, brainstorming, and building meaningful connections