Backend & Data Infrastructure Team Lead

About the Company

Our client is an early-stage cybersecurity startup building foundational endpoint security technology for Windows, Linux, and macOS.Their work lives deep in the operating system: processes, memory, kernel boundaries, and attacker tradeoffs. We focus on real threats, real exploits, and defensive systems that must hold up against skilled adversaries — not academic exercises.

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on Backend & Data Infrastructure Team Lead to lead our engineering team and architect our next-generation data platform. This role sits at the intersection of technical leadership, high-performance microservices, and modern Data Lakehouse architecture. You will guide the team in building scalable event-driven systems using Go and NestJS, while owning a storage layer centered on Apache Iceberg, Nessie, and SeaweedFS.

As a hands-on Team Lead, you will own technical direction and delivery, support day-to-day execution, develop engineers through feedback and mentoring, and continue to write mission-critical code. You will also establish the "Golden Paths" for our infrastructure on AWS using ArgoCD and raise engineering standards across the team.

Key Technologies

• Languages: Golang (Data hot-paths), TypeScript/NestJS (APIs & Business Logic).
• Data Lakehouse: Apache Iceberg (Table Format), Nessie (Catalog & Versioning), Trino (Query Engine).
• Event Streaming: Apache Kafka & Kafka Connect.
• Storage: SeaweedFS (Distributed Object Store).
• Infrastructure: AWS (EKS, S3, RDS), ArgoCD (GitOps), Kubernetes, Terraform.

What You'll Do

• Team Leadership: Lead, coach, and develop the backend and data infrastructure team, set clear priorities, and create a strong culture of ownership, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Technical Direction: Own architecture and technical decisions for the backend and data platform, translating business needs into a clear, pragmatic engineering roadmap.
• Delivery Ownership: Drive planning and execution, remove technical blockers, manage dependencies, and ensure high-quality, predictable delivery.
• Hands-on Engineering: Design, build, and optimize high-throughput data pipelines and scalable microservices in Go and NestJS, contributing directly to mission-critical code.
• Data & Storage Architecture: Lead the design of Kafka-to-Iceberg ingestion, SeaweedFS storage, and Nessie data-versioning workflows, ensuring reliability, scalability, and data integrity.
• Cloud & GitOps: Lead the move to a fully declarative deployment model using ArgoCD on AWS EKS, ensuring environment parity, automated rollbacks, and strong AWS/DevOps practices across the team.

Requirements

• Experience: 7+ years in Backend Engineering, including proven experience as a Team Lead or in direct technical leadership of engineers, with strong exposure to distributed systems or data infrastructure.
• System Design: Proven track record of designing event-driven architectures (Kafka) and managing large-scale SQL/NoSQL databases.
• Cloud Native: Deep expertise in AWS services and Kubernetes orchestration.
• DevOps Mindset: Strong experience with ArgoCD or similar GitOps tools; you believe infrastructure belongs in code, not in manual consoles.
• People Leadership: Proven ability to lead engineers, provide clear direction and feedback, support professional growth, and build an accountable, collaborative team.
• Analytical Depth: Familiarity with the "Lakehouse" paradigm and query engines like Trino/Presto.