Senior Backend Engineer

✨ Where do we hire from? Find out more about hiring at TestGorilla

Hi there, I'm Marcus, Senior Engineer Manager at TestGorilla. We’re excited to share more about the Senior Backend Engineer role and our team.

At TestGorilla, we’re on a mission to revolutionize hiring.
We help companies source, screen, and shortlist talent through skills-based hiring—empowering one billion people to land their dream jobs. With 2M+ candidates tested and 400+ science-backed assessments, we’re making hiring smarter, faster, and fairer.

About the role

As our Senior Backend Engineer, you'll be essential in achieving TestGorilla's vision of helping one billion people land their dream job. You'll be designing and scaling backend solutions to support TestGorilla’s rapid growth and deliver a reliable and high-performing assessment platform for global users. This isn't just a role; it's your chance to make a real difference by building technology that helps millions of candidates get hired based on their skills, not their CVs. You’ll directly contribute to elevating the technical foundation that empowers companies to hire faster, smarter, and more fairly at scale. You’ll also play a key role in identifying and integrating AI capabilities to improve our product and developer experience. Join our driven, remote-first team, and let’s achieve these ambitious goals together.

Want to see what it's like to join the Engineering team and make an impact as a Senior Backend Engineer? Get an inside look in this quick video:

Responsibilities

In this role, your responsibilities will include but not limited to:

• Uphold TestGorilla's behaviors and foster an inclusive, supportive culture.
• Collaborate effectively with global colleagues across teams and time zones.
• Design and implement scalable, reliable, and secure backend systems using modern technologies like Python, Django, Redis, and AWS.
• Build and maintain RESTful APIs and event-driven microservices to support product growth and integration needs.
• Lead the full software development lifecycle - from ideation and design to implementation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Write clean, tested, and well-documented code that meets high standards for quality and maintainability.
• Explore and apply AI tools to improve the efficiency and quality of development workflows.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver features that improve the candidate and customer experience.
• Apply DevOps practices and tools to ensure fast, safe, and automated deployments in a cloud environment.
• Mentor and support less experienced engineers by sharing technical knowledge and promoting best practices.
• Participate in architecture decisions and contribute to improving system performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Continuously learn and adapt to new technologies, contributing to a culture of innovation and technical excellence

What you’ll bring

We're looking for someone who:

• Is passionate about TestGorilla's mission to help one billion people find their dream jobs.
• Has strong written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Thrives in a fast-paced, remote-first environment.
• Has strong proficiency in backend development using Python and Django.
• Has experience designing and building scalable, distributed microservices architectures.
• Understands RESTful API design and event-driven systems.
• Is skilled with both relational and NoSQL databases.
• Is comfortable working with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, including deployment and infrastructure management.
• Is excited to experiment with and apply AI technologies to automate repetitive tasks, enhance developer productivity, and improve platform capabilities
• Demonstrates strong problem-solving abilities and resilience in ambiguous situations.
• Communicates technical decisions clearly and effectively in writing and verbally.

We actively seek diversity and encourage applications from everyone. If you're interested in this role but your experience doesn't perfectly match the description, please still apply. Studies show that women and underrepresented groups can be hesitant to apply unless they meet every requirement. If this role excites you and you're confident you can do the job, we encourage you to apply!

Bonus skills

While these skills aren’t a requirement, we’d be very interested to hear from you if you have:

• Experience applying AI tools to improve development quality and effectiveness.
• Experience in SaaS companies and Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, etc).
• Knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools like Docker and Kubernetes.

What’s in it for you?

Please note: Some specifics, particularly around leave, may vary depending on your country of residence. This will be discussed during the hiring process.

• Global Team: Join a fully remote, mission-driven team from around the world
• Competitive compensation: Receive a competitive pay €64,000 - €80,000 + Share Appreciation Rights (SARs)
• Remote & flexible work: Work from almost anywhere*. Enjoy flexible hours and asynchronous work to balance work and life.

* Check out the Countries we currently hire from here

• Remote work budget: €1,000 per year to help you set up your home office
• Growth & development: Invest in yourself and your career with a 3.5% L&D budget and clear growth opportunities
• Stimulating work environment: Tackle new challenges and work with innovative technology in a dynamic setting
• Connect with your team: Join optional fun virtual socials, AMAs with team members and leadership, and regular fun chats. Build a strong sense of community!
• TestGorilla community groups: Join peers to build community and boost opportunities for connection, advocacy, and professional development.
• Parent/Caregiver support: We provide a caregiver-friendly work environment with paid 8-16 week parental leave and tailored return-to-work approaches
• Work-life balance: Our unlimited and flexible time off policy empowers you to take the time you need to recharge and maintain your well-being

Interested?

We believe in using our own product to ensure fair and objective hiring. If this role aligns with your skills and aspirations, we invite you to complete one of our very own assessments. This will give you a first-hand experience of our platform and help us get to know you better. We look forward to hearing from you!

TestGorilla is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We believe that diverse teams are stronger teams, and we encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We understand that some candidates may experience test anxiety, and we want to assure you that accommodations are available and can be requested prior to sitting our assessments. Your request will not negatively impact your application, as we do not factor this into our review process.