Go Senior Backend Engineer, Livestorm

• Deep backend engineering expertise with a track record of designing systems at scale. Go is our primary language, whether it's already yours or you're a strong backend engineer ready to make it your home, you have the depth to ramp up fast
• Strong API design skills: REST, gRPC, GraphQL, you have opinions on when to use what and how to make APIs that developers love
• Masters AI tooling and drives its adoption across the team to raise both engineering velocity and quality
• Experience designing event-driven architectures, distributed systems, or platform/infrastructure layers consumed by other engineering teams
• Solid knowledge of data validation, SQL/NoSQL databases, and messaging systems like Kafka
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• A product mindset with high agency: you engage with user feedback, ask "why", and make sure technical outcomes solve real problems without waiting to be asked
• Solid experience with performance engineering, scalability, and reliability at the backend level
• Good communication skills, able to talk through technical trade-offs with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders

Desirable

• We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer who will help us shape the Livestorm of the future: someone who thrives in ambiguity, defines the "how" when only the "what" is loosely sketched, and brings the technical excellence to make it real
• This is a high-agency, high-impact role. We're moving towards a service-based architecture, and you'll work across the engineering organisation to design and build the backend systems that make that evolution real: scalable, cost-efficient, and built to last
• You'll have a direct hand in defining architecture, establishing best practices, and raising the bar, not just in the code, but in how the team works. At Livestorm, Product, Design, and Engineering work as one, and you'll collaborate closely with all three to turn ambiguous problems into clean, well-reasoned technical directions
• We're building with Go, and we're looking for someone who can write excellent Go, whether that's your primary language or you're a strong backend engineer who's ready to make Go your home
• You'll be joining Livestorm's engineering organisation at a moment where the team structure itself is evolving. Where exactly you land, whether embedded in a product squad, helping form a new team, or working across multiple teams, will depend on what Livestorm needs and what you bring to the table
• Livestorm's Tech & Product org is around 30 people. The engineering culture is collaborative, transparent, and product-minded. You'll work closely with Product Managers, Designers, and fellow engineers who care deeply about what they ship
• Design and build backend services in Go, APIs, SDKs, and event-driven systems that shape how Livestorm evolves
• Own architectural decisions: define service boundaries, data models, API contracts, and patterns the whole organisation builds on
• Work closely with Product Managers and Designers to understand requirements, explore solution options, and ensure technical implementations align with user needs and product vision
• Drive API and SDK ergonomics: you care that the platform is a pleasure for other engineers to build on, not just "correct"
• Lead cross-team technical initiatives and align engineering and product stakeholders around shared goals
• Contribute to build-vs-buy decisions on infrastructure, choosing pragmatically over dogmatically
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to other engineers through design reviews, pair programming, and direct feedback
• Champion good practices in testing, observability, CI/CD and backend reliability
• Document technical designs, processes, and system architecture
• Contribute to strategic planning and decision-making for Livestorm's technical direction
• Navigate ambiguity with confidence: define the "how" when requirements are still forming, make pragmatic bets, and iterate
• The stack
• Here's the technical landscape you'll be working with and shaping:
• Architecture: Service-based architecture, we're evolving from a monolith towards well-defined, independently deployable services
• Language: Go (primary for new services). The existing system runs on Ruby and Ruby on Rails
• API layer: gRPC between services, GraphQL gateway for client-facing APIs, REST where appropriate
• Data and messaging: PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka with Schema Registry, Elasticsearch
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, cloud-native deployment
• Observability: Grafana with OpenTelemetry, Sentry, monitoring tooling
• AI tooling: Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor
• Testing: Testify, Ginkgo and Gomega for Go services. The existing Ruby system uses RSpec
• CI/CD: Continuous integration and deployment pipelines, Git & GitHub