Job Description

Backend Engineer — Systems & Product Engineering

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We build software for problems that are not always solved by reaching for another framework or adding another API endpoint.

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Our primary backend stack is TypeScript and Python . They're excellent languages for the kind of product development we do, and we use them extensively.

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But we're looking for engineers who are interested in more than the stack.

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We want people who enjoy understanding how things work, who can reason about systems, who learn technologies because they're curious, and who can take an ambiguous problem and turn it into a positive engineering solution.

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Minimum Experience: 2 Years .

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What you'll work on

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You'll design and build backend systems that need to be:

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- Reliable under real-world failure modes
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- Observable and debuggable
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- Efficient at scale
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- Simple enough to evolve
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- Thoughtfully designed rather than assembled from frameworks
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- Capable of handling problems where the obvious solution isn't necessarily the right one
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Your day-to-day work will primarily involve TypeScript, Python, databases, distributed systems, APIs, queues, storage, networking, and cloud infrastructure .

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Depending on the problem, we may also use other technologies. If some other language ( cough cough go, rust, or even mojo) turns out to be better for the job, we have no problem incorporating it. Language is a tool. We care about whether you can choose and use the right tool.

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What we're looking for

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We're particularly interested in engineers who:

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- Think in terms of systems and trade-offs
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- Can design a backend system from first principles when required
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- Understand concurrency, networking, databases, caching, queues, and failure modes
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- Are comfortable reading documentation, source code, and technical papers when necessary
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- Can learn an unfamiliar technology and become productive with it quickly
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- Enjoy solving problems for which there isn't already a Stack Overflow answer
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- Question existing designs instead of blindly following established patterns
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- Can explain why a particular design is appropriate, not merely how to implement it
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- Have opinions about engineering, but are willing to change them when the evidence says they should
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- Take ownership of problems rather than waiting for perfectly specified requirements
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- Care about performance and can reason about where bottlenecks actually come from
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- Care about the quality of work they produce, and aim for a very, very high-quality product.
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We don't expect you to know everything.

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We do expect you to be capable of learning almost anything you need.

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The languages are not the filter

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You don't need to already know every technology in our stack.

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In fact, we're deliberately not making a long list of frameworks and libraries a requirement.

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If you've spent the last few years writing excellent Go, Java, C++, Rust, C#, or another language and can demonstrate strong engineering fundamentals, we'd rather talk to you than reject you because you haven't used our preferred framework.

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Similarly, if you've primarily worked in TypeScript or Python but have gone deep into systems, performance, distributed computing, databases, compilers, networking, or another technically demanding area, we'd like to hear from you.

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What matters is what you did with a technology and, more importantly, why you learned it in the first place.

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Things we find interesting

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You might be a particularly good fit if you've done things like:

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- Learned Go or Rust outside of work because you wanted to understand a different programming model
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- Learned another kind of language, say OCaml, Haskell (ML family), or Clojure (Lisp family).
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- Built a database, server, compiler, runtime, distributed system, storage engine, or other non-trivial piece of software
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- Read technical papers and implemented something from one
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- Contributed to open-source projects
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- Built something just because you wanted to understand how it worked
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- Investigated a difficult production problem all the way down to its root cause (maybe also fixing a third-party library bug, if that was the root cause)
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- Designed a system where reliability, latency, throughput, consistency, or cost genuinely mattered
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None of these are requirements.

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They're examples of the kind of engineering curiosity we value.

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What we don't care much about

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We're less interested in:

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- How many frameworks you know
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- Memorizing API trivia
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- Having used exactly our technology stack before
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- Collecting certifications
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- Having a long list of technologies on your resume
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- Saying "I know X" without being able to explain how X actually works
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We'd rather see one technically deep, end-to-end project than twenty technologies listed on a resume.

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How we interview

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Our interview process is designed to test engineering ability rather than familiarity with a particular framework.

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Expect conversations around - system design and engineering fundamentals. You may be asked to implement or modify or critique something non-trivial; we would be looking for clarity of thought, and how you approach the problem.

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We may deliberately introduce technologies and problems (hopefully) unfamiliar to you. And we expect you to ask clarifying questions, or documentation if it comes to it, and then solve the problem.

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Why this role

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You'll have significant ownership over backend architecture and the opportunity to work on problems where engineering judgment matters.

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We're not looking for people to spend their careers wrapping third-party APIs.

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We're looking for people who want to build things, understand things, and make things better.

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If you are the kind of engineer who learns a new language because you wondered what it could teach you, you'll probably enjoy working here, and we'd like to meet you.

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Primary stack: TypeScript, Python

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Also relevant: Go, Rust, C/C++, networking, databases, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, systems programming, open source

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📌 Backend Engineer (Kolkata)
🏢 droplet.ink
📍 Kolkata