Senior Backend Engineer

<p>GeneralMind is a Berlin-based AI startup building an autonomous AI-powered supply chain automation platform. Backed by Lakestar, Leo Capital, and leading angels with $12M raised in January 2026, we're eliminating manual, inbox-driven workflows in enterprise supply-chain operations - automating Sales Order processing, Purchase Order lifecycle management, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable. We integrate with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce, serving companies like a $16B food retailer and an $8.2B resources company.</p> <h2>Tasks</h2> <p><strong>Backend Ownership</strong></p> <ul> <li>Own the backend end-to-end: service architecture, API design, reliability posture, and long-term technical direction.</li> <li>Be the person who knows how everything fits together - and who other engineers come to when they're not sure where something belongs.</li> <li>Set the bar on code quality, service boundaries, and shared abstractions across the engineering team.</li> <li>Make foundational decisions with conviction, document the reasoning, and evolve them as the system grows.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Python Services &#x26; Production Systems</strong></p> <ul> <li>Design for failure: retries, timeouts, graceful degradation, and recovery paths built in from the start.</li> <li>Write code that is easy to operate - observable, testable, and straightforward to debug at 2am.</li> <li>Understand the runtime, not just the framework. Know when the problem is the code, the config, or the infrastructure.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Workflow Engineering &#x26; Temporal</strong></p> <ul> <li>Design and build durable workflows using Temporal - long-running processes, async coordination, saga patterns.</li> <li>Own workflow observability: know when a workflow is stuck, degraded, or silently wrong before a customer notices.</li> <li>Think carefully about idempotency, failure modes, and replay semantics — not just the happy path.</li> <li>Evolve workflows without breaking running instances; manage versioning with intention.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Reliability &#x26; Systems Thinking</strong></p> <ul> <li>Detect regressions before they become incidents; build the tooling to catch them early.</li> <li>Own the operational posture of the services you build: alerting, runbooks, on-call readiness.</li> <li>Identify structural debt before it compounds; propose refactors that are thoughtful, not just correct.</li> </ul> <h2>Requirements</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Experience:</strong> 6+ years building and operating backend systems in Python, with clear ownership of production services - not just feature delivery.</li> <li><strong>Python depth:</strong> Non-negotiable. You make deliberate choices about async vs. sync, framework selection, and performance tradeoffs. You know the language well enough to have opinions.</li> <li><strong>Temporal or equivalent:</strong> You've used Temporal (or a comparable workflow engine) in production. You understand durable execution, not just task queues.</li> <li><strong>Reliability instinct:</strong> Idempotency, retries, and observability are part of how you design, not afterthoughts.</li> <li><strong>End-to-end ownership:</strong> You're comfortable being the person who holds the full backend picture. You identify what's broken or missing before you're asked, and you don't leave the system worse than you found it.</li> <li><strong>A real spike:</strong> We're a strong team with broad coverage. What we're hiring for is someone who brings a 10x improvement in an area we're currently underinvested in. That might be workflow systems, data infrastructure, AI-native backend patterns, or deep domain expertise. We don't know exactly what shape it takes - but you should know what yours is, and be able to articulate why it matters.</li> </ul> <p>Find more <a href="https://www.arbeitnow.com/english-speaking-jobs">English Speaking Jobs in Germany</a> on Arbeitnow</a>