MMD Services
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This range is provided by MMD Services. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.
Base pay range $70.00/hr - $110.00/hr
Our client is modernizing a critical commerce platform and is seeking a Principal Backend Architecture Engineer who will take full ownership of the backend technical vision and drive the evolution of a cloud-native, high-scale architecture. This is a role for someone who enjoys solving complex system problems, shaping long-term engineering strategy, and building scalable distributed services that power real-time customer experiences.
This is not a maintenance role! It is an opportunity to rethink, redesign, and elevate the backend platform that supports millions of transactions across multiple digital channels. You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product, SRE, and cloud teams to build a resilient technical foundation that sets the standard for the organization.
Responsibilities: Backend Architecture & Platform Strategy
Define and own the architectural blueprint for a modern, modular backend built on cloud-native principles.
Establish service boundaries, integration patterns, and communication strategies (REST, gRPC, GraphQL, event-driven messaging).
Lead the design of a platform that can support rapidly increasing traffic, scalability demands, and high availability requirements.
Introduce architectural principles such as domain-driven design, API-first thinking, and distributed systems best practices.
Design and implement backend services using Java, TypeScript, or Node.js with an emphasis on reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
Develop performance-focused APIs, leveraging caching, asynchronous workflows, and concurrency strategies to reduce latency under heavy load.
Guide the transition from legacy platforms to containerized, cloud-hosted microservices running on Kubernetes.
Performance Engineering & Production Excellence
Anticipate scaling needs by analyzing traffic patterns, bottlenecks, and system limits — and architect solutions before problems arise.
Drive improvements related to SLAs, SLOs, SLIs, and golden signal monitoring to ensure customer-facing reliability.
Build robust fault-tolerant patterns that support graceful degradation, high throughput, and rapid recovery.
Leadership, Mentorship & Technical Direction
Act as a technical mentor and thought leader, raising the bar for backend engineering across the organization.
Partner with cross-functional teams — from frontend to SRE to data engineering — to align architectural decisions with overall platform goals.
Lead strategic initiatives that modernize engineering practices, improve deployment quality, and increase development velocity.
Balance big-picture architecture with hands-on implementation, POC development, and production rollouts.
Qualifications: Technical Depth
Strong experience building and scaling distributed systems and event-driven architectures.
Expertise with Java and Node.js/TypeScript in production environments.
Hands-on cloud experience (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP also relevant).
Proficiency with Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, and cloud-native toolchains.
Deep understanding of API design, service-to-service communication, caching layers, messaging systems, and database optimization.
Has personally defined (not just contributed to) architectural strategy for high-scale platforms.
Can clearly articulate tradeoffs (e.g., REST vs gRPC, sync vs async, monolith vs microservices).
Experience guiding engineering teams through modernization efforts, cloud migrations, or large-scale refactoring.
Scalability & Performance Experience
Designed systems supporting high user traffic, high transaction volumes, or complex concurrency demands.
Experienced with diagnosing performance issues using logs, tracing, profiling, dashboards, and distributed observability tools.
Industry Exposure
Experience in e-commerce, retail, healthcare platforms, or other customer-facing, transaction-heavy environments is highly advantageous.
MMD Services Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants are considered for all positions without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age, national origin, ancestry, physical/mental disability, medical condition, military/veteran status, genetic information, marital status, ethnicity, alienage, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
Seniority level Mid-Senior level
Employment type Contract
Job function Information Technology
Industries Retail, Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage, and Online and Mail Order Retail
Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at MMD Services by 2x
Get notified about new Back End Developer jobs in
Greater Chicago Area .
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Get AI-powered advice on this job and more exclusive features.
This range is provided by MMD Services. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.
Base pay range $70.00/hr - $110.00/hr
Our client is modernizing a critical commerce platform and is seeking a Principal Backend Architecture Engineer who will take full ownership of the backend technical vision and drive the evolution of a cloud-native, high-scale architecture. This is a role for someone who enjoys solving complex system problems, shaping long-term engineering strategy, and building scalable distributed services that power real-time customer experiences.
This is not a maintenance role! It is an opportunity to rethink, redesign, and elevate the backend platform that supports millions of transactions across multiple digital channels. You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product, SRE, and cloud teams to build a resilient technical foundation that sets the standard for the organization.
Responsibilities: Backend Architecture & Platform Strategy
Define and own the architectural blueprint for a modern, modular backend built on cloud-native principles.
Establish service boundaries, integration patterns, and communication strategies (REST, gRPC, GraphQL, event-driven messaging).
Lead the design of a platform that can support rapidly increasing traffic, scalability demands, and high availability requirements.
Introduce architectural principles such as domain-driven design, API-first thinking, and distributed systems best practices.
Design and implement backend services using Java, TypeScript, or Node.js with an emphasis on reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
Develop performance-focused APIs, leveraging caching, asynchronous workflows, and concurrency strategies to reduce latency under heavy load.
Guide the transition from legacy platforms to containerized, cloud-hosted microservices running on Kubernetes.
Performance Engineering & Production Excellence
Anticipate scaling needs by analyzing traffic patterns, bottlenecks, and system limits — and architect solutions before problems arise.
Drive improvements related to SLAs, SLOs, SLIs, and golden signal monitoring to ensure customer-facing reliability.
Build robust fault-tolerant patterns that support graceful degradation, high throughput, and rapid recovery.
Leadership, Mentorship & Technical Direction
Act as a technical mentor and thought leader, raising the bar for backend engineering across the organization.
Partner with cross-functional teams — from frontend to SRE to data engineering — to align architectural decisions with overall platform goals.
Lead strategic initiatives that modernize engineering practices, improve deployment quality, and increase development velocity.
Balance big-picture architecture with hands-on implementation, POC development, and production rollouts.
Qualifications: Technical Depth
Strong experience building and scaling distributed systems and event-driven architectures.
Expertise with Java and Node.js/TypeScript in production environments.
Hands-on cloud experience (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP also relevant).
Proficiency with Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, and cloud-native toolchains.
Deep understanding of API design, service-to-service communication, caching layers, messaging systems, and database optimization.
Has personally defined (not just contributed to) architectural strategy for high-scale platforms.
Can clearly articulate tradeoffs (e.g., REST vs gRPC, sync vs async, monolith vs microservices).
Experience guiding engineering teams through modernization efforts, cloud migrations, or large-scale refactoring.
Scalability & Performance Experience
Designed systems supporting high user traffic, high transaction volumes, or complex concurrency demands.
Experienced with diagnosing performance issues using logs, tracing, profiling, dashboards, and distributed observability tools.
Industry Exposure
Experience in e-commerce, retail, healthcare platforms, or other customer-facing, transaction-heavy environments is highly advantageous.
MMD Services Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants are considered for all positions without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age, national origin, ancestry, physical/mental disability, medical condition, military/veteran status, genetic information, marital status, ethnicity, alienage, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
Seniority level Mid-Senior level
Employment type Contract
Job function Information Technology
Industries Retail, Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage, and Online and Mail Order Retail
Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at MMD Services by 2x
Get notified about new Back End Developer jobs in
Greater Chicago Area .
#J-18808-Ljbffr