Platform Backend Engineer — Go/Rust & Distributed Systems

About the Role

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Platform Backend Engineer — Go/Rust & Distributed Systems based in Canada.

This is a high-impact backend engineering role focused on building the core platform services that power workflow execution, identity, event routing, secrets management, and audit infrastructure. You will work hands-on with Go or Rust to develop reliable, secure, and scalable distributed systems used by engineering teams and AI-driven workloads. The role combines event-driven architecture, multi-tenant platforms, cloud security, and production reliability. You will help design systems where correctness, observability, and operational resilience are essential. The environment is fast-paced and engineering-led, with significant ownership over architecture and production outcomes. This is an opportunity to solve complex infrastructure challenges while shaping a platform used at global scale.

What You'll Do

• Build, deploy, and operate backend platform services supporting API access, Kafka-based event routing, workflow execution, machine identity, secrets management, and immutable audit records.
• Design and implement event-driven workflows that transform webhooks, alerts, and platform events into durable executions using technologies such as Kafka and Temporal.
• Develop secure, pluggable secrets-management and KMS abstractions supporting multiple cloud providers, customer-level cryptographic isolation, envelope encryption, and bring-your-own-key models.
• Implement fine-grained capability and authorization controls for customers, workflows, operations, and service-to-service interactions.
• Own GitOps-based deployment workflows for versioned workflow definitions across isolated customer environments.
• Develop onboarding automation covering identity provisioning, compliance configuration, and customer-specific key-management setup.
• Build secure connector services for third-party APIs, incorporating scoped access, managed credentials, request validation, and pre-execution audit logging.
• Improve platform observability, performance, reliability, failure recovery, and production readiness through structured monitoring and incident-response practices.
• Contribute to architecture and engineering decisions around distributed systems, security, multi-tenancy, and operational resilience.

Who You Are

• Proven professional experience building and operating production backend services using Go or Rust.
• Strong experience designing event-driven distributed systems with Kafka or similar technologies, including retries, idempotency, replay, and at-least-once delivery.
• Experience implementing authentication and authorization using OAuth 2.0, OIDC, token lifecycle management, or fine-grained access controls.
• Practical experience with encryption and key-management solutions, including cloud KMS platforms, envelope encryption, or key-hierarchy architectures.
• Experience operating multi-tenant production systems, with hands-on knowledge of structured logging, metrics, distributed tracing, and incident response.
• Experience with Temporal or another durable workflow orchestration platform is a strong advantage.
• Familiarity with identity platforms such as Zitadel, Keycloak, Auth0, Okta, or equivalent technologies.
• Experience with ClickHouse or another columnar, append-only, or audit-oriented data store is beneficial.
• Knowledge of GitOps, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Experience integrating enterprise platforms such as MSP, PSA, RMM, security, or Microsoft 365 APIs.
• Understanding of security and compliance requirements in environments subject to frameworks such as SOC 2, HIPAA, or CMMC is advantageous.
• Experience developing multi-cloud services across AWS, Azure, or GCP is a plus.
• Strong problem-solving, ownership, communication, and collaboration skills, with the ability to operate effectively in a high-growth environment.