Lead Backend Engineer

Wonderfil builds smart refill stations that eliminate single-use plastics. Our IoT-powered machines dispense shampoo, detergent, and other household essentials across major retailers and universities. We’re scaling rapidly and looking for a Senior Backend / Cloud Engineer to design and build the foundation of our server-side systems — from infrastructure to APIs — powering the next generation of our connected refill ecosystem.

Role Overview

This is a foundational role. You’ll architect and implement Wonderfil’s cloud and backend platform from the ground up — spanning infrastructure, APIs, and data systems. You’ll collaborate closely with the software and hardware teams, but this will be your domain to shape: defining standards, selecting the right tools and services, and building a backend that’s secure, scalable, and easy to grow on. You’ll also be hands-on, writing clean, maintainable, and well-tested code that sets the standard for how we build.

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Compensation

Wonderfil is a rapidly growing, venture-backed climate-tech startup, and we’re looking for someone who’s excited to grow with us over the long term. Our compensation package includes a competitive salary, generous stock options, and a full suite of benefits designed to support both your work and life.

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• Salary: $140,000 DOE, plus equity options in a high-growth public benefit corporation
• Benefits: Health insurance, unlimited PTO, paid holidays, and flexible work arrangements

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You’ll have the opportunity to take ownership of core backend systems powering a national refill network—your work will directly shape the infrastructure eliminating single-use plastics across campuses and retailers nationwide.

What You’ll Do

Platform & Infrastructure

• Evaluate our current platform and design a scalable, maintainable cloud architecture balancing performance, cost, and growth.
• Choose and configure the right mix of services (e.g., ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, S3, CloudFront, IAM, or equivalents) based on best fit — not preset tooling.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code (e.g., CDK, Terraform, or Pulumi) to ensure consistent, reproducible environments.
• Oversee domain and certificate management (Route 53, SSL/TLS) as part of infrastructure ownership.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, deployments, and safe rollbacks.

Database & Data Management

• Design and maintain a relational database schema (PostgreSQL) as the system of record.
• Migrate existing NoSQL data (DynamoDB) where appropriate into the new schema.
• Implement secure backups, replication, migrations, and retention policies.
• Collaborate with the software team to model data entities that align with IoT devices, customers, and transactions.

Backend & APIs

• Design and implement secure, high-performance REST or GraphQL APIs powering IoT machines, mobile apps, and internal tools.
• Develop backend services for payments, subscriptions, credit balances, and receipts (integrating with providers like Stripe).
• Support internal tools for device configuration, asset management, and reporting — owning the backend and data layer; front-end development handled collaboratively.
• Integrate with third-party APIs (ERPs, CRMs, analytics, payments, etc.).
• Implement authentication and authorization (OAuth2, Cognito, JWT, or mutual TLS).

DevOps & Observability

• Establish monitoring, logging, and alerting pipelines using tools such as CloudWatch, Grafana, or Datadog.
• Implement telemetry and anomaly detection for proactive issue resolution.
• Integrate auditing and compliance monitoring for transparency and reliability.
• Set up deployment strategies that enable zero-downtime releases and automated rollbacks.

Security & Compliance

• Implement security best practices aligned with standards such as PCI DSS, GDPR/CCPA, and SOC 2.
• Manage key rotation, secrets, IAM policies, and encryption in transit and at rest.
• Build systems that meet security and privacy expectations without personally managing audits or legal compliance.
• Align architecture with frameworks like AWS Well-Architected or NIST for long-term security posture.

Data & Analytics Enablement

• Build data pipelines for aggregating telemetry and usage data to support future analytics and forecasting.
• Collaborate with data or product teams to enable insights and predictive capabilities — not required to design ML models directly.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Own the backend and cloud domain — set technical direction, document decisions, and mentor others as the team grows.
• Work closely with the software and hardware teams to ensure seamless IoT-to-cloud integration.
• Provide input on future backend and DevOps hiring needs as the platform scales.
• Communicate progress, trade-offs, and priorities directly to leadership.

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​Required Skills & Experience

• 5 years of experience building and maintaining production backend systems.
• Proficiency in one or more modern backend languages such as Python, Go, TypeScript (Node.js), or Java — and the ability to choose and justify the right tool for each problem.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms, preferably AWS (experience with ECS, Lambda, RDS, API Gateway, S3, or equivalents).
• Deep experience with PostgreSQL and relational database design.
• Proven experience with Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and cloud networking.
• Familiarity with IoT protocols (MQTT, device shadows, telemetry ingestion).
• Working knowledge of DNS, SSL/TLS, and domain management.
• Comfortable operating autonomously, balancing pragmatism with scalability.
• Interest in sustainability and technology that reduces waste.

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​Preferred/Nice to Have

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• Experience with data pipelines, analytics, or machine learning.
• Background in IoT hardware integration or edge computing.
• Some front-end experience for internal tools.