Senior Software Engineer

Cake is a global talent platform used by more than 10 million people worldwide. Through products such as Cake AI, we are building AI-powered Job Search and Hiring Copilots that help talent discover the right opportunities and enable companies to identify and hire the right people more effectively.

We are looking for an experienced Backend Engineer with strong technical judgment, a builder mindset, and a passion for turning ideas into reliable products. 

You will work closely with product, design, marketing, and business teams to understand real-world problems, design scalable solutions, and continuously deliver improvements to production. Although this is a backend-focused role, we encourage engineers to expand across the stack and independently own high-impact projects from problem definition to implementation.

We actively provide engineers with the AI tools and resources they need—including tools such as Claude Code—to accelerate development, explore new approaches, and improve the way we build software.

Our Stack

Backend: Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, AWS, Ruby, Node.js, Kubernetes, Terraform, Github Action, etc.
Frontend: Next.js

We mainly use Python and FastAPI, but prior experience with Python is not required. We welcome engineers with strong backend fundamentals who are excited to learn and work with our technology stack.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product, design, marketing, and business development, to understand business needs and translate them into effective technical solutions.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable APIs, backend services, and system components.
• Design and optimize database structures and queries to support reliable, efficient data storage and retrieval.
• Improve system architecture, development workflows, infrastructure, and third-party platform integrations to increase stability and engineering efficiency.
• Take ownership of projects from technical planning and implementation through deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Use AI-assisted development tools and emerging technologies to improve development speed, quality, and product capabilities.
• Work beyond traditional backend boundaries when needed, gradually developing full-stack capabilities and independently delivering complete product experiences.
• Maintain high engineering standards through thoughtful technical design, testing, code reviews, observability, and documentation.
• Share technical knowledge and provide guidance to other engineers, contributing to a collaborative and continuously improving engineering culture.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in backend software development.
• Proficiency in at least one backend programming language, with solid backend and database fundamentals.
• Experience building reliable and scalable systems.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (e.g. AWS EKS or equivalent managed Kubernetes services) and Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform.
• Strong product sense and ownership mindset—you actively shape solutions and solve user and business problems, rather than simply implement requirements.
• Proficiency in using AI-assisted development tools for coding, debugging, and code review.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to independently drive projects from idea to launch.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience with Python and FastAPI.
• Experience building or integrating AI-powered products.
• Contributions to open-source projects.

Interview Process

Our interview process consists of three main stages:

1. A 30-minute online introductory call with our manager.
2. A 45-minute online technical interview with a senior engineer.
3. A 2–3 hour onsite interview, which may include a problem-solving exercise, an logic test, a system design discussion, and conversations with members of the engineering team.

Please include the following in your Cover Letter:

• A past project that gave you a strong sense of achievement, preferably involving the integration of AI (LLM/ML) into a real product.
• Your most distinctive technical strengths or experiences that set you apart from other backend engineers.