Top Backend Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Design, build, test, and maintain backend services and APIs powering the insurance platform. Integrate payments, documents, and data providers, improve system stability, performance, and scalability, mentor team members, and participate in architectural decisions and agile ceremonies.

As a Senior Backend Engineer at DuckDuckGo, you'll lead backend projects, mentor engineers, and develop AI-enhanced features for the company's privacy-centric product line.

Design and implement secure, scalable backend services for speech inference and audio processing. Optimize networking, transcoding, latency, memory, and distributed compute orchestration. Measure and improve system performance, debug complex networking/scheduling/HPC issues, customize services for customers, and partner with Product to deliver features end-to-end.

The Staff Software Engineer will lead technical strategy, ensure system availability, and develop backend systems at scale, collaborating across teams to drive capacity modeling and operational quality.

Design and implement scalable backend services for payment and transaction workflows using Java. Own end-to-end features from data model and APIs to Angular frontends, improve reliability and performance, refactor legacy systems, troubleshoot production issues, and collaborate with product and design. Leverage AI-assisted development tools responsibly and share best practices across the team.

Lead and mentor a backend engineering team to design and deliver cloud-native, distributed microservices and full-stack solutions. Drive regulatory-focused technology projects, collaborate with product managers, write and review code, experiment with emerging tools, and leverage AWS/Azure/GCP, containers, and databases to build scalable systems.

Design and implement Kotlin backend services and end-to-end systems for Toast POS device management. Lead technical designs, estimations, performance optimization, cross-team collaboration, and software quality practices including modern testing and observability. Mentor peers and drive product roadmap alignment with product, hardware, and QA stakeholders.

Lead and deliver quarterly goals for a backend team; guide engineers through ambiguous problems; collaborate with product, design, and analytics; identify and resolve project and technical issues; ensure operational availability and on-call readiness; set code and design quality standards; and mentor and develop team members.

Design, build, and operate backend systems for prediction markets, including order management, trade matching, settlement, and market resolution. Architect distributed, low-latency systems with strict financial correctness, lead multi-quarter technical projects, mentor engineers, and collaborate with Product, Compliance, and Risk to meet regulatory requirements.

Leads backend architecture and hands-on development for a government licensing and regulatory platform on Google Cloud. Designs Java and Spring Boot microservices, PostgreSQL persistence, event-driven workflows, integrations, payment flows, security, and compliance capabilities. Establishes testing, code review, and CI/CD standards; mentors engineers; coordinates with client technical leads and stakeholders; decomposes work and reports delivery status. The role requires ownership from system design through production operation and integration with state and federal systems.

Build and deliver Java 21 and Spring Boot microservices on Google Cloud for a government licensing and regulatory platform. Responsibilities include PostgreSQL or AlloyDB persistence, event-driven workflows, scheduled processing, secure REST/SOAP/SFTP/webhook integrations, payment and reconciliation flows, compliance controls, automated testing, code reviews, and CI/CD deployment.

Lead technical strategy and delivery for backend marketplace/search systems. Collaborate with PM, design, and analytics; own operational reliability, monitoring, on-call, testing, and runbooks; set code/design standards; drive major feature delivery and deprecations; mentor and develop engineering talent.

Design, implement, and optimize high-performance backend systems in Rust for an xOT security platform. Participate across the development lifecycle—debugging, testing, and performance tuning—while integrating relational and NoSQL data stores, microservices, third-party devices, and AI tools. Provide technical leadership, code review feedback, and promote secure, reliable, observable distributed systems.

Design, build, and maintain backend services powering Clerkie's platform. Improve reliability, performance, scalability, observability, and support feature development. Participate in technical design, cross-functional collaboration, documentation, and own projects end-to-end in a fast-moving startup environment.

Lead backend and full-stack work on the Payments team, building multi-gateway integrations (Stripe, PayPal), payment APIs, and customer payment UIs. Ensure secure, compliant (PCI-DSS) payment flows, reliability, observability, and scalability across AWS/Kubernetes microservices. Partner cross-functionally to design architecture, implement settlement/reconciliation, and maintain high availability.

Develop, maintain, and optimize mission-critical backend APIs and scalable cloud services for web and mobile clients. Implement secure, high-performance systems, automated tests, observability, and technical documentation. Mentor peers, follow best practices, and support a proof-of-concept launch and fundraising activities as a volunteer contributor.

Lead a portfolio of backend engineering projects and a development team to design, build, and operate distributed microservices and cloud-native solutions (Java, Go, Python). Mentor engineers, collaborate with product managers, ensure regulatory-compliant systems, and occasionally code or evaluate implementations.

Design, build, and optimize scalable backend services, APIs, and data pipelines. Integrate with third-party billing/commerce systems, maintain serverless/event-driven architectures on AWS, ensure security and performance, implement automated tests and CI/CD, mentor engineers, and drive architectural decisions.

The Back-end Engineer will develop and maintain services and APIs, design data models, and contribute to system stability, collaborating with other engineers and product managers.

Build and maintain backend services and APIs, write unit tests, debug and optimize systems, support migration from Supabase to cloud, improve reliability, and integrate AI/RPA workflows while learning under senior mentorship.

Lead backend development to scale and harden API infrastructures, implement unit testing playbooks, optimize core algorithms, support migration from Supabase to a robust cloud provider, ensure system reliability and scalability, collaborate with frontend and DevOps, and integrate AI workflows and RPA where applicable.

Design, implement, and evolve complex backend features and architecture. Improve reliability, performance, and security at scale. Mentor engineers, participate in incident response, set backend standards, and integrate agentic AI into production workflows.

Provides technical leadership and delivery ownership for engineers building scalable AWS cloud-native applications. Leads architecture and solution design across Java, Spring Boot microservices, OpenSearch, CI/CD, observability, and AWS infrastructure. Drives modernization, scalability, security, reliability, DevOps automation, incident resolution, and continuous improvement while mentoring engineers and collaborating with product, architecture, platform, and business stakeholders.

Lead technical strategy and execution for a backend ledger team building highly available, audit-grade financial systems. Drive architecture, reliability, monitoring, on-call practices, code quality, cross-functional collaboration, and mentoring to ensure accurate, scalable ledger operations.

Design, build, and maintain Python backend services and internal APIs for high-traffic hosting platforms. Administer Linux production systems, optimize MySQL queries and schemas, troubleshoot incidents, and participate in on-call rotation. Collaborate with senior engineers and cross-functional teams to deliver tested features, modernize legacy Perl systems, and contribute to technical design decisions. Apply AI responsibly throughout development, debugging, testing, and code review.