[Remote] Senior Backend Engineer, Data Systems
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Code Metal is redefining code translation for mission-critical industries, helping defense partners move more quickly and reliably from algorithm to silicon. They are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer, Data Systems to design and build the core data foundations of their platform, focusing on relational data models and backend services.
Responsibilities
- Design and evolve relational data models that represent complex domain concepts, entities, relationships, and workflows
- Build and maintain SQL schemas, constraints, indexes, migrations, and query patterns that support scalable backend systems
- Define and enforce data contracts between services, APIs, ingestion pipelines, and downstream consumers
- Develop ingestion and normalization workflows for structured, semi-structured, and external source data
- Move business logic from ad hoc application code into well-modeled, extensible data structures, including:
- Configurable rules
- Eligibility or feasibility checks
- Mappings and lookup tables
- Domain-specific constraints
- Decision logic represented in data
- Partner with product, domain experts, and engineers to convert ambiguous or evolving requirements into clear data abstractions
- Build backend services and APIs that expose, validate, and operate on these data models
- Improve the consistency, traceability, and maintainability of data across the system
- Help establish patterns for:
- Versioned data models
- Schema governance
- Data validation
- Audit-ability
- Backward-compatible contracts
- Participate in architecture discussions and code reviews, especially where data modeling decisions have long-term consequences
Skills
- Strong professional experience as a backend software engineer working on production systems
- Deep experience with relational databases, especially PostgreSQL or similar systems
- Strong ability to design: normalized schemas, associative/relationship tables, constraints and validation logic, enum / lookup models, lifecycle-aware data structures
- Strong SQL skills, including: complex joins, aggregation, CTEs, views or materialized views where appropriate, query performance awareness
- Experience defining or working with data contracts between services, APIs, and persistence layers
- Experience building or maintaining data ingestion, transformation, or normalization workflows
- Ability to reason carefully about business rules, edge cases, and how domain logic should be represented in software
- Strong programming ability in Python
- Experience working with ORMs and migration frameworks such as: SQLAlchemy, Alembic, or comparable tools
- Strong communication skills and comfort collaborating with engineers, product stakeholders, and domain experts
- Experience designing rule-driven systems, policy engines, feasibility checks, or configuration-driven business logic
- Experience deciding when logic belongs in: application code, SQL/database structures, rules tables, services or domain layers
- Experience modeling complex operational domains such as: simulations, logistics, planning systems, geospatial systems, defense, aerospace, or other highly structured data environments
- Experience with: PostGIS or geospatial data, event-driven systems, versioned datasets or snapshots, data lineage / provenance, imported external datasets with inconsistent or incomplete source quality
- Familiarity with API schema design and typed contracts, such as: Pydantic, JSON Schema, protobuf or similar tools, OpenAPI
Benefits
- Pay depends on experience, but we strive to be at the upper end of the salary range
- Health care plan with 100% premium coverage, including medical, dental, and vision
- 401k with 5% matching
- Paid Time Off (uncapped vacation, plus sick and public holidays)
- Flexible hybrid or remote work arrangement
- Relocation assistance for qualifying employees
Company Overview