Urban Legend: BACKEND ENGINEER (MID–SENIOR)

<img src="https://we-work-remotely.imgix.net/logos/0081/7221/logo.gif?ixlib=rails-4.0.0&w=50&h=50&dpr=2&fit=fill&auto=compress" /> <p> <strong>Headquarters:</strong> Washington, DC <br /><strong>URL:</strong> <a href="https://urbanlegend.co/">https://urbanlegend.co/</a> </p> <p>LOCATION REQUIREMENTS (NO EXCEPTIONS)</p> <p>Remote: Must reside in Texas, USA</p> <p>We are unable to consider candidates outside of Texas for this remote role.</p> <p><br><br>ROLE DESCRIPTION</p> <p>This is a full-time Backend Engineer role reporting directly to the CTO, open to either a late mid-level engineer ready to level up or a solidly senior engineer looking for ownership and impact. Title and comp will be calibrated to experience. You'll have direct access to senior technical leadership and a real voice in shaping our architecture and roadmap with no layers in between.</p> <p>You will design, develop, and maintain the scalable backend services that power Urban Legend's campaigns, creator tools, and conversion tracking. You'll work across a polyglot stack, primarily Python/Django and Ruby/Rails, and contribute to an active migration of our infrastructure from Heroku to Render. You'll partner closely with product, design, and front-end engineers to ship customer-facing features end-to-end.</p> <p>We move fast, ship often, and use modern AI tooling (Cursor in particular) as a core part of our day-to-day workflow. Above all, we are looking for someone with a strong bias toward action. You'd rather ship something today, learn from it, and iterate than spend a week debating the perfect approach.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Our backend ecosystem includes:</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>• A Django/DRF monolith (Postgres, Redis, RQ workers, Docker)</p> <p>• Two Ruby on Rails services (Rails 7/8, Postgres, Puma)</p> <p>• A Flask service for high-throughput conversion tracking</p> <p>• A Node.js/TypeScript service (Express, Drizzle, Playwright/Puppeteer)</p> <p>• Shared infrastructure across Docker, Postgres, Redis, and AWS — currently in the middle of a Heroku → Render migration</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>• A strong bias toward action. You ship, you measure, you iterate. You don't get stuck in analysis paralysis, and you're comfortable making good-enough decisions with incomplete information.</p> <p>• Strong, production-level expertise in either Python/Django or Ruby on Rails. You don't need both on day one, but you should be excellent in one and excited to ramp quickly on the other.</p> <p>• Demonstrated ability to learn unfamiliar frameworks and languages quickly. We'll occasionally need you in Flask, Node/TypeScript, or wherever the work lives.</p> <p>• Solid fundamentals in OOP, relational databases (Postgres), REST API design, background job processing, and caching (Redis).</p> <p>• Comfortable working in Docker-based local and production environments.</p> <p>• Experience building scalable, high-performance, secure backend systems.</p> <p>• Strong collaboration skills in a remote/hybrid environment, with exceptional problem-solving ability and attention to detail.</p> <p>• Active, hands-on experience with AI coding tools, particularly Cursor, and a point of view on how to use them effectively.</p> <p>• Bachelor's degree in CS, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>STRONGLY PREFERRED</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>• Infrastructure / platform experience — you're a product engineer first, but you've spent time on a platform team or otherwise have meaningful DevOps chops. We are looking for someone who can add real value to our Heroku → Render migration, not a pure DevOps hire who can't ship product work.</p> <p>• Hands-on experience with Render, Heroku, or similar PaaS platforms.</p> <p>• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, observability (Sentry, logging, metrics), and zero-downtime deploys.</p> <p>• Familiarity with AWS (S3, Lambda, etc.).</p> <p>• Front-end literacy sufficient to integrate cleanly with our React/TypeScript clients.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>NICE TO HAVE</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>• Experience with creator / marketing / ad-tech platforms.</p> <p>• Experience with payments (PayPal, Stripe, Brex, etc.).</p> <p>• Experience with web scraping, headless browsers (Playwright/Puppeteer).</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>BENEFITS:</p> <ul> <li>Industry competitive compensation with significant opportunities for growth</li> <li>Health benefits package</li> <li>Unlimited PTO</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>To apply:</strong> <a href="https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/urban-legend-backend-engineer-mid-senior">https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/urban-legend-backend-engineer-mid-senior</a></p>