Senior Backend Engineer - Databases Tempo | Canada | Remote

Role overview Help guide the technical direction of a distributed tracing backend as it grows into a platform for observability products and automated investigations. The work spans ingestion, storage, querying, and metrics generation, with a focus on making the service reliable and efficient at large scale. This position is remote and open to candidates in Canada.

Responsibilities - Lead substantial engineering initiatives from early problem definition through implementation and rollout, such as query improvements, autoscaling, or trace aggregation APIs. - Own key parts of the backend, make and document design decisions, and balance performance, cost, and system complexity. - Develop structured, predictable APIs that product teams, external integrators, and automated assistants can use reliably. - Improve operational performance through automation, safer rollouts, actionable alerts, and reduced recurring toil. - Measure outcomes against service objectives such as write latency, incident recurrence, and cost per unit of ingested data. - Work with senior technical peers and partner teams on broader system direction.

Requirements - Strong backend engineering experience and the ability to lead complex, multi-month technical projects. - Experience designing or operating distributed systems that handle substantial data volumes. - Sound judgment across system performance, reliability, cost, and maintainability. - Ability to communicate technical decisions through design documents, reviews, and collaboration across teams. - Interest in operational ownership, including service objectives, incident prevention, and production improvement.

Benefits and work setup - Remote role for candidates based in Canada. - The source describes a global remote culture, autonomy, transparent communication, and an annual leave policy of 30 days, including designated company shutdown days.