Senior Backend Engineer

Dispel builds secure, private network infrastructure for critical industries, and they are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to deliver complex systems across software, infrastructure, networking, and security. The role involves scoping work into well-defined milestones, resolving technical issues, and collaborating with cross-team stakeholders to ensure high-quality software delivery.

Responsibilities:

• Design, scope, and deliver — from architecture through implementation and testing
• Scope and stage work into well-defined milestones to avoid monolithic deliverables, enabling frequent and predictable delivery
• Estimate projects, deliver on those estimates, and communicate risks when timelines shift
• Write code that is easy for other engineers to understand and reason about — clear, well-tested, and designed to last
• Create model documentation that others extend and reference
• Resolve a wide range of technical issues in creative ways, spanning software, infrastructure, and network layers
• Select methods and techniques that result in low-defect, high-performance software that is easy for the team to maintain and extend
• Identify problems and risks in your own and others' work, and address them before they compound
• Work with cross-team stakeholders to define requirements and ensure technical execution aligns with business objectives
• Own reliability, monitoring, logging, and instrumentation of the systems you build
• Ensure systems meet performance, scalability, and security requirements — particularly as they relate to network infrastructure and cloud environments
• Participate in incident response and root cause analysis
• Continuously improve system quality, automation, and operational maturity
• Communicate effectively across teams — you identify and surface requirements problems early, reducing rework and wasted effort
• Partner with product, security, and infrastructure teams to align technical decisions with company objectives
• Contribute to technical discussions that influence broader engineering direction
• Informally mentor IC1 and IC2 engineers on your team — through code review, pairing, and sharing technical context
• Participate in evaluation portions of interview loops to help Dispel hire well

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record of delivering complex systems
• Strong proficiency in at least one core programming language — you are effective in the languages your team uses and can pick up new ones as needed
• Comfortable using coding agents (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Code) as part of your daily workflow
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure in particular) including networking constructs such as VPCs, subnets, security groups, and private endpoints
• Experience working across multiple layers of the stack: application, database, infrastructure, or security
• Demonstrated ability to work with cross-team stakeholders to define requirements and deliver results with minimal oversight
• Strong understanding of system reliability, monitoring, and performance optimization
• Experience on multiple teams or in multiple roles — you bring breadth that informs your technical judgment
• Strong proficiency in one or more of: Python, TypeScript, Go
• Must have been deeply involved with complex, production-grade APIs and services
• Strong understanding of cloud execution environments and how architectural decisions affect them
• Must have strong understanding of databases, caches, queues, events, and workers
• Solid understanding of network fundamentals: routing, switching, VPN protocols, DNS, and firewalls
• Strong understanding of network security principles and hardening practices
• A willingness to accept failure and feedback, learn and try again
• A passion for learning new disciplines and gaining a deep understanding of how others on the team do their work
• An ability to communicate clearly and succinctly both in-person and over team chat