Lead Backend Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE Zego is redefining the future of on‑demand insurance for businesses and individuals across the globe. As a Lead Backend Engineer, you will spearhead the design, development, and scaling of our core policy‑management and risk‑assessment services. You will collaborate closely with product, data science, and DevOps teams to deliver reliable, high‑performance APIs that power our dynamic marketplace. Your leadership will shape the technical vision, mentor junior engineers, and ensure our platform remains resilient, secure, and compliant with evolving regulatory standards. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Lead the architecture and implementation of new microservices, ensuring they meet performance, reliability, and security benchmarks. - Mentor a team of 5‑7 senior and mid‑level engineers, fostering a culture of code quality, continuous integration, and peer review. - Own the end‑to‑end lifecycle of critical features, from requirement analysis and design to deployment and post‑production monitoring. - Collaborate with data scientists to integrate predictive models into the backend pipeline, optimizing underwriting and claims processing. - Drive automation of infrastructure provisioning and deployment pipelines using IaC tools, reducing release cycles and operational overhead. - Champion best practices for observability, logging, and alerting, ensuring rapid incident response and root‑cause analysis. - Engage with cross‑functional stakeholders to translate business goals into scalable technical solutions, maintaining alignment with product roadmaps. WHAT YOU'LL NEED - 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a leadership or senior engineering role. - Deep expertise in Go, Java, or Rust, and a proven track record of building distributed, high‑throughput systems. - Strong background in designing RESTful and gRPC services, with familiarity in GraphQL preferred. - Hands‑on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, ArgoCD). - Proficiency in database design and performance tuning for both relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (Cassandra, DynamoDB) stores. - Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, conduct code reviews, and establish engineering standards. - Excellent communication skills, capable of articulating complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders. - A passion for clean code, automated testing, and continuous delivery, with a strong commitment to security and compliance. WHY REMOTE Zego operates a fully distributed workforce that thrives on asynchronous collaboration and trust. Our remote culture empowers engineers to work from any location, with flexible hours that accommodate different time zones and personal commitments. Daily stand‑ups, weekly all‑hands, and real‑time chat channels keep teams aligned, while asynchronous documentation and code reviews ensure momentum is maintained without the need for synchronous meetings. We value outcomes over presence, encouraging a results‑driven environment where your contributions are recognized regardless of where you work. BENEFITS Zego offers a competitive benefits package that includes comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage; a generous paid time off policy with unlimited vacation for eligible employees; a remote work stipend to support home‑office setup; a learning budget for courses, conferences, and certifications; and a 401(k) plan with company match. Additionally, we provide access to wellness programs, mental health resources, and regular virtual team‑building events to foster community across our global engineering organization.