Senior Backend Engineer - Search Features & APIs (SABR)

Constructor
Munich, Germany
Remote

Who this role is best for

A natural match if you have experience building and operating high-traffic Python backend services in a distributed systems environment.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with a background in e-commerce product discovery and experience in scalable service-oriented architectures
    β€” β€œBackground in search, ranking, information retrieval, or e-commerce product discovery.”
  • Individuals who thrive in small teams and take ownership of features from design to production behavior
    β€” β€œengineers own problems end to end, from design through on-call.”
  • Engineers with a track record of leading small projects and mentoring mid-level developers
    β€” β€œcomfortable leading a project with one or two other engineers and helping teammates grow along the way.”

Things to consider

  • The role requires on-call responsibility and incident response for systems you own
    β€” β€œTake part in on-call for the systems you own, and lead incident response and follow-through when things break.”
  • The team prioritizes fast and reliable service delivery with strict latency and failure management
    β€” β€œwe serve up to 15k RPS, fan out to many internal services on every request, and are expected to stay available and degrade gracefully when any of them fails or slows down.”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your experience with public API design and backward compatibility in your resume and interviews
    β€” β€œDesign and evolve public API endpoints with backward compatibility in mind”
  • Emphasize your ability to debug performance issues in live systems and improve reliability
    β€” β€œHands-on experience with observability (metrics, logs, traces) and debugging performance issues in live systems.”
  • Showcase your ownership mindset by providing examples of long-term system maintenance post-merge
    β€” β€œOwnership that extends past merge, to how the system behaves in production.”
Pace Β· Fast PacedCollaboration Β· HighAutonomy Β· HighDecision Impact Β· Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • designing and delivering features
  • improving system performance
  • mentoring mid-level engineers
Typical background
senior engineering experienceproduction python services

Skills & requirements

Required

PythonDistributed SystemsApi DesignPerformance OptimizationOn-call Experience

Preferred

High-traffic SystemsLatency-sensitive ServicesPublic Api Design

Stack & domain

PythonAPI DesignPerformance OptimizationReliability EngineeringProblem-solvingCommunicationTeamworkLeadershipE-commerceSearch Algorithms

About the role

Original posting from Constructor via Ashby

ABOUT US

Launched in 2019, Constructor is an AI-first e-commerce search and discovery platform that helps shoppers find the right products at the right time and enables leading global e-commerce brands to drive meaningful revenue and conversion gains.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The SABR team owns the top layer of request processing for product discovery. We own the service that first receives product discovery requests (autocomplete, search, browse & recommendations) & executes the entire business logic that drives product discovery. That service also functions as a gateway to parse incoming user requests, orchestrate calls across the internal services that do the ranking and retrieval, interpret their responses, and assemble the final response the customer sees. We also own the public configuration APIs customers use to control how discovery behaves, and the MCP layer that exposes all of it to AI agents.

Our team owns both platform & product components: Because of the positioning of our services, we take part in every architectural decision of our core product offering. At the same time, our goals are heavily influenced by direct customer feedback, because all product discovery-related features are either implemented in or integrated with our services.

All of our services are public APIs, so interface design and backward compatibility are a constant part of the job. But most of our attention goes to keeping them fast and up: we serve up to 15k RPS, fan out to many internal services on every request, and are expected to stay available and degrade gracefully when any of them fails or slows down.

The work is distributed systems in practice rather than in theory: request orchestration, failure isolation, caching, latency budgets, capacity planning, and the observability to know what is actually happening in production. The team is small enough that engineers own problems end to end, from design through on-call.

ABOUT YOU

You're a senior engineer who wants to own features end to end, not just close tickets. You've built and run production Python services, ideally high-traffic or latency-sensitive ones, and you've been on-call for them. You think in trade-offs: latency versus cost, a quick fix versus a durable one, a new parameter versus a public API customers can't afford to see break. You can take a feature from a rough problem statement to a design, ship it, and then make sure it behaves in production. You're comfortable leading a project with one or two other engineers and helping teammates grow along the way. When a problem is only partly defined, you ask the right questions to pin it down. When you meet an unfamiliar protocol or system, you read the spec and work out how it fits. You change your mind when someone has a better argument, and you still care about your code long after it merges.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

  • Own the design and delivery of features and components in our services.
  • Design and evolve public API endpoints with backward compatibility in mind, and contribute to architecture discussions for our services.
  • Improve performance and reliability: find latency and failure hotspots, add the observability needed to understand them, and fix them.
  • Take an active part in design and code review, and mentor mid-level engineers.
  • Work with product, solutions/support, and other engineering teams to understand customer needs and turn them into solid technical solutions
  • Take part in on-call for the systems you own, and lead incident response and follow-through when things break.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

TECHNICAL

  • Solid experience building and operating backend services in production, ideally high-traffic or low-latency ones.
  • Extensive Python knowledge (our primary language).
  • Hands-on experience with observability (metrics, logs, traces) and debugging performance issues in live systems.
  • Experience designing and evolving public APIs that external customers depend on.
  • Experience designing & implementing scalable service-oriented architectures.

BEYOND THE CODE

  • Track record of delivering projects end to end, including leading small efforts with other engineers.
  • Collaborative mindset: open to feedback, and willing to change your position when someone has a better argument.
  • Clear written communication - design docs, RFCs, postmortems.
  • Good judgment about trade-offs and scope.
  • Comfort with ambiguity and loosely defined problems.
  • Ownership that extends past merge, to how the system behaves in production.

NICE TO HAVE

  • Experience with AWS
  • Background in search, ranking, information retrieval, or e-commerce product discovery.
  • Exposure to AI/LLM-facing infrastructure (MCP, agent tooling, or similar).

BENEFITS

🏝️ Unlimited vacation time - we strongly encourage all of our employees take at least 3 weeks per year

🌎 Fully remote team - choose where you live

πŸ›‹οΈ Work from home stipend! We want you to have the resources you need to set up your home office

πŸ’» Apple laptops provided for new employees

πŸ§‘β€πŸŽ“ Training and development budget for every employee, refreshed each year

πŸ‘ͺ Maternity & Paternity leave for qualified employees

🧠 Work with smart people who will help you grow and make a meaningful impact

πŸ’΅ Base salary: $80k–$120k USD, depending on knowledge, skills, experience, and interview results TBD

πŸ“ˆ Stock options - offered in addition to the base salary

πŸŽ‰ Regular team offsites to connect and collaborate

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION AT CONSTRUCTOR

At Constructor.io http://Constructor.io we are committed to cultivating a work environment that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome individuals of all backgrounds and provide equal opportunities to all applicants regardless of their education, diversity of opinion, race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status or affiliation in any other protected group.

Studies have shown that women and people of color may be less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every one of the qualifications listed. Our primary interest is in finding the best candidate for the job. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all of our listed qualifications.

How we handle your data. By submitting this application, you acknowledge that Constructor will collect and process the personal data you provide for the purpose of evaluating your candidacy for this role. If you are not selected, we will retain your data for a limited period as described in our Recruitment Privacy Notice. After that period your data will be deleted or anonymized.

How we handle your data. By submitting this application, you acknowledge that Constructor will collect and process the personal data you provide for the purpose of evaluating your candidacy for this role. If you are not selected, we will retain your data for a limited period as described in our Recruitment Privacy Notice https://constructor.com/recruitment-privacy-notice. After that period your data will be deleted or anonymized.

Source: Constructor careers (Ashby)

Similar roles

More roles at Constructor