Staff / Principal Backend Engineer

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About Ajaib
Ajaib is an Indonesian investment platform helping people access and manage investments across stocks, mutual funds, crypto, and other digital investment products.

Trusted by more than three million customers, Ajaib is focused on making investing more accessible, affordable, and intuitive. As the platform continues to grow, building reliable, scalable, and secure technology is fundamental to serving customers and supporting the business.

We’re looking for a Staff or Principal Backend Engineer to shape the architecture and technical direction of the backend systems powering Ajaib’s investment, crypto, money, platform, and shared-services products.

The role
You’ll be one of Ajaib’s most senior individual contributors, leading through technical expertise, architectural judgement, and influence rather than people management.

You’ll work closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, senior engineers, and engineering leadership to solve complex technical problems and build reliable backend systems that support millions of customers.

At Staff level, you’ll own architecture across multiple squads, lead cross-team initiatives, improve engineering standards, and mentor Senior Engineers.

At Principal level, you’ll define long-term technical direction across a major engineering domain, lead company-wide technical initiatives, and act as a trusted technical adviser to engineering and product leadership.

This is a hands-on technical-leadership role where you’ll work through ambiguity, influence decisions without formal authority, and balance short-term delivery with long-term technical sustainability.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design and evolution of mission-critical backend systems

• Own architecture across multiple products, services, and engineering squads

• Design scalable distributed systems capable of supporting millions of customers and high transaction volumes

• Drive architecture decisions across product, platform, infrastructure, security, and data teams

• Lead architecture and system-design reviews for high-impact initiatives

• Balance immediate delivery needs with long-term scalability, reliability, and maintainability

• Identify systemic engineering challenges before they become organisational bottlenecks

• Improve system reliability, performance, security, observability, and operational resilience

• Lead the modernisation of backend platforms, legacy systems, developer tooling, and engineering workflows

• Establish strong engineering patterns across microservices, event-driven architecture, API design, and domain-driven design

• Coordinate complex technical initiatives across multiple teams

• Align technical decisions with customer needs and wider business priorities

• Resolve architectural disagreements through data, collaboration, and technical expertise

• Strengthen CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, cloud infrastructure, and automation

• Raise the engineering bar through code reviews, design reviews, technical documentation, and mentoring

• Write and lead technical proposals, architecture documents, RFCs, and engineering standards

• Mentor Senior Engineers and help them develop towards Staff-level responsibilities

• Share technical knowledge through workshops, engineering talks, documentation, and internal communities

• Partner with Engineering Directors, Heads of Engineering, and Product Leadership on strategic technology investments

What you bring

• Strong professional software-engineering experience, including ownership of complex production systems

• Expert-level backend development experience using Java, Golang, or both

• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, microservices, event-driven architecture, API design, and domain-driven design

• Experience designing and operating reliable systems at significant scale

• Strong experience with Kafka or similar event-streaming technologies

• Experience with Redis and relational databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL

• Experience with Cassandra or similar NoSQL databases

• Strong understanding of Kubernetes, Docker, and containerised infrastructure

• Experience working with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure

• Experience with CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and modern software-delivery practices

• Strong understanding of reliability engineering, observability, security, performance optimisation, and operational resilience

• A proven track record of leading complex technical initiatives involving multiple teams

• The ability to influence technical direction without relying on reporting lines or formal authority

• Strong systems thinking and the ability to look beyond individual features or services

• Excellent architectural judgement and pragmatic decision-making

• The ability to simplify complex technical problems and communicate decisions clearly

• High ownership, accountability, and comfort working through ambiguity

• Strong written and spoken English

Staff-level experience

• Typically eight to ten or more years of professional software-engineering experience

• Demonstrated ownership of multiple production systems or technical platforms

• Experience leading architecture and delivery across several engineering squads

• A strong record of influencing technical decisions beyond a single team

• Experience improving engineering standards, internal tooling, and developer experience

• Experience mentoring Senior Engineers and developing future technical leaders

Principal-level experience

• Typically twelve or more years of professional software-engineering experience

• Demonstrated ownership of technical strategy across an engineering domain or organisation

• A track record of leading organisation-wide modernisation or engineering-transformation initiatives

• Experience acting as a senior technical authority for architecture, standards, and strategic engineering decisions

• The ability to influence Engineering Directors, Heads of Engineering, Engineering Managers, and other senior individual contributors

Nice to have

1. Previous experience within fintech, banking, brokerage, payments, investment, wealth management, trading, or cryptocurrency platforms

2. Experience designing high-availability platforms supporting millions of customers or high transaction volumes

3. Experience building low-latency, resilient, event-driven systems

4. Experience modernising legacy systems or leading large-scale platform and cloud migrations

5. Experience improving developer productivity through internal platforms, automation, tooling, or developer-experience initiatives

6. Experience working with globally distributed engineering teams

7. Experience working within regulated financial or technology environments

8. Experience partnering closely with infrastructure, security, data, risk, and product teams

9. Contributions to open-source projects, technical publications, engineering blogs, conference talks, patents, or technical communities

Why join

• High-impact ownership: shape the backend architecture supporting one of Indonesia’s leading investment platforms

• Technical leadership: remain deeply technical while influencing multiple teams and business areas

• Meaningful scale: solve complex distributed-systems challenges involving millions of customers and financial transactions

• Organisation-wide influence: improve engineering standards, platforms, tooling, and technical culture

• Complex challenges: work across investment, crypto, money, platform, and shared-services products

• Leadership opportunity: mentor senior engineers and help develop Ajaib’s future technical leaders

• Global collaboration: work remotely with distributed engineering teams and travel to Jakarta each quarter

Notes to Applicants
A few things worth knowing before you apply:

• The interview process may include an HR and culture discussion, a technical assessment where required, live coding, system design, and a final conversation with Ajaib’s VP of Engineering.

• You may be asked to design a distributed system, evaluate an architectural approach, review technical trade-offs, or discuss a complex initiative you have led across multiple teams.

• Please do not include confidential information, customer data, source code, proprietary architecture, or sensitive details from current or previous employers during the interview process.

• This is a full-time remote role open to candidates in eligible locations, including the MENA region, Poland, the UAE, and Egypt.

• The role requires company-sponsored travel to Jakarta for approximately one to three weeks each quarter.

• If you need accommodations at any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know in your application.

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