Senior Backend Engineer, HumanSignal
$140-200k
Data labelling for machine learning
Job no longer available
Data labelling for machine learning
21-100 employees
Job no longer available
$140-200k
21-100 employees
Company mission
To help data scientists use data to teach ML/AI models how to make the best predictions.
Role
Who you are
- Senior-level experience shipping production backends in Python/Django (or a close equivalent) and SQL
- Strong product sense: you’ve made scope/trade-off decisions and iterated based on real-world usage and feedback
- Depth in REST API design, relational modeling, migrations, and performance tuning
- Experience with background processing/queues (e.g., Celery/RQ/Kafka-backed workers) and operational concerns
- Clear written communication at a Senior IC level—concise RFCs/PRDs, actionable reviews, and crisp decision records
- Nice to have: GraphQL familiarity; Kafka/streaming; Spark/BigQuery; security/compliance exposure; multi-region architectures
What the job involves
- We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer with product vision. You’ll design and operate services in Python/Django that power labeling and evaluation workflows at scale: clean API contracts, robust data models, efficient background jobs, and dependable performance
- You’ll partner early with PM/Design/FE to frame problems, prototype to learn, and make pragmatic scope calls—so complex workflows feel simple, reliable, and fast for users
- Design, build, and operate backend services/APIs in Python/Django with Postgres/Redis
- Own outcomes, not tasks: refine scope, suggest trade-offs, and land increments that deliver value quickly and safely
- Model data and author migrations; tune queries and caching; manage background jobs/queues for high-volume workflows
- Evolve API contracts with FE; keep interfaces clear, versioned, and resilient to change
- Improve reliability and performance (timeouts, retries, idempotency, rate limits, pagination, backpressure)
- Implement secure, multi-tenant patterns: auth, permissions/RBAC, auditability, and safe data boundaries
- Contribute to testing strategy (unit/integration), error handling, and graceful failure modes
- Partner with Support to investigate production issues and turn learnings into fixes and prevention
- Engage with our open-source community (issues, discussions) to understand real-world needs and improve developer experience
- Participate in architecture discussions and code reviews; mentor teammates and improve patterns across the codebase
Our take
A number of new industries are developing, and winning big, in the slipstream of the AI boom. One of them is data labelling: the process of identifying raw data and tagging it with labels that will provide informative context for the machine model to learn from. It is proving a lucrative business, and HumanSignal is one of a growing number of startups looking to capitalize on this.
HumanSignal’s principal product is Label Studio, a collaborative data labelling solution with a focus on streamlining team management, relevant access and data security. With industry leaders such as IBM, Nvidia and Facebook having already adopted this product, it has certainly made a splash thus far.
HumanSignal has substantial funding under its belt but will have to compete with a large number of new data-labelling startups - some of them enjoying similar early success. With many heralding data labelling as the new “gold rush”, and the industry spreading worldwide, the competition looks fierce - but the space will be rewarding for those that win out.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
May 2022
$25m
SERIES A
Jul 2019
$0.2m
SEED
Total funding: $25.2m
Company benefits
- Work from Anywhere
- Equity Options
- Inclusive Culture & Environment
- Annual Team Offsite
- Time off & Vacation
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Michael Malyuk
(Co-Founder)Previously Lead Software Developer at VYou and Cinematique.
Nikolai Liubimov
(Co-Founder & CTO)Previously CTO at Audio Research Group. Since then, has been a Senior Software Engineer at Huawei Technologies, and Yandex.
Max Tkachenko
(Co-Founder)Previously worked as a Freelancer in Photo, Video & Design for over 14 years.
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