Senior Backend Engineer

As a Senior Backend Engineer at Calm, you will design, develop, and maintain the crucial backend systems powering our mobile and web applications. This role involves collaborating with various stakeholders to gather requirements, developing secure and scalable backend solutions, and ensuring high-quality, maintainable code to support our mental health mission.

To qualify for the Senior Backend Engineer role at Calm, candidates typically need around 8 years of experience in backend technologies, a degree in Computer Science or related fields, and proficiency in languages like GoLang, as well as tools such as Docker and Kubernetes. Your ability to deliver consistently in a fast-paced environment is crucial.

Yes! The Senior Backend Engineer position at Calm is primarily remote, allowing you the flexibility to work from various locations including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Minneapolis. However, being in a collaborative environment is essential, so engaging actively with your team is encouraged.

At Calm, a Senior Backend Engineer should have experience with programming languages and technologies such as GoLang, SQL, and frameworks for building RESTful APIs. Familiarity with modern cloud infrastructure tools like GCP and Terraform is also valuable in our tech stack.

The working culture for a Senior Backend Engineer at Calm is collaborative and product-minded. With a focus on fostering innovation and technical excellence, you'll work in small pods, collaborate closely with engineers, designers, and product managers, and contribute significantly to achieving Calm's mission.

Calm provides a competitive salary range for the Senior Backend Engineer role, alongside equity options, comprehensive benefits, a 401k plan, and flexible time off. They are committed to supporting your professional growth while fostering a healthy work-life balance.

Calm goes beyond just creating mental health applications; they foster a workplace culture that emphasizes well-being. They offer resources, flexible schedules, and a supportive environment that values diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring that employees can thrive both personally and professionally.

In your response, discuss specific projects where you utilized GoLang, describe the challenges you faced, and highlight how you overcame them. Be ready to showcase your understanding of GoLang's concurrency and context features relevant to backend services.

Provide a detailed overview of how you designed and developed RESTful APIs, including how you ensured they were secure and efficient. It’s beneficial to talk about any frameworks or tools you used, such as JWT for authentication or express.js for route handling.

Discuss methods like logging, performance monitoring, and using debugging tools. Mention any specific scenarios where these strategies helped resolve critical issues, emphasizing your problem-solving skills.

Explain how you implement unit and integration testing, perhaps referencing specific testing frameworks like JUnit or Mocha. Highlight a particular instance where your testing procedures caught critical errors before deployment.

Detail your work with GCP, particularly how you have employed its various services in the context of backend development. Discuss specific projects that benefited from cloud computing, emphasizing scalability and security.

Outline your understanding of CI/CD principles, describing your direct experience with implementing these pipelines in past roles. Focus on how they improved code quality, reduced deployment times, and enhanced overall workflow efficiency.

Discuss your strategies for effective communication and teamwork, giving examples of how you liaised with product managers, designers, and other engineers to achieve project goals and foster a culture of collaboration.

Share a specific example of an innovative approach you took to solve a problem or enhance performance. Highlight the process, tools involved, and how your solution benefited the overall project or team productivity.

Illustrate your commitment to learning by discussing industry resources you follow, any training or certifications you've pursued, and how you’ve applied new knowledge or trends to improve backend systems.

Reflect on the qualities that contribute to a robust backend system, such as reliability, scalability, and security. Use examples from your experience to demonstrate how you have achieved these attributes in your work.