Backend Team Lead

About the Job

Imagen is seeking an experienced Backend Team Lead, to build and lead a high-performing backend engineering team while driving critical technical initiatives across our platform. This is a pivotal role where you'll balance hands-on technical contribution with people leadership, shaping both our engineering culture and technical architecture.

You'll own significant parts of our backend infrastructure - from large-scale image processing pipelines and AI model serving systems to distributed cloud architecture and RESTful APIs. As a technical leader, you'll mentor engineers, drive architectural decisions, and ensure our systems scale to handle billions of images while maintaining reliability and performance.

Additionally, you will serve as a Squad Lead, managing a cross-functional business unit that includes both Backend and Frontend engineers, driving end-to-end product delivery.

This role offers the opportunity to directly impact Imagen's growth by building the team and systems that power our AI-driven photo editing platform used by professional photographers worldwide.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of Backend engineers, conducting 1-on-1s, performance reviews, and career development planning.
• Lead a cross-functional squad (Backend + Frontend engineers) as a Squad Lead, driving product initiatives from conception to delivery.
• Drive technical strategy and architectural decisions for Backend systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Develop and optimize scalable, distributed systems on cloud infrastructure.
• Balance hands-on technical work (coding, design reviews, troubleshooting production issues) with team leadership and strategic planning.
• Conduct code reviews and establish best coding practices, ensuring adherence to engineering standards across your team.
• Monitor system health and lead incident response efforts to ensure high availability of customer-facing services.
• Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and technical excellence within your team.

• 5+ years of experience as a Backend Engineer, with at least 2+ years as Team Lead.
• B.Sc. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field from a well-known university.
• Proficiency in at least one major cloud platform: AWS, GCP, or Azure (AWS preferred).
• Proven expertise in Backend server development using languages like Python, Scala, Go, or Java.
• Experience with SQL or NoSQL databases.
• Experience with developing and maintaining distributed systems at scale.
• Experience leading or working closely with cross-functional teams (Backend, Frontend, Product) - advantage.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, product, and business teams.
• Passion for building great products, and empowering engineers to do their best work.