Forward-Deployed Engineer - Software Engineer w/ Back-End Focus

About Us Viaduct builds production-grade AI systems for the world's manufacturers: not pilots, not proofs of concept. The Internal Efficiencies team is deploying real AI use cases inside one of Japan's largest manufacturers - a modern cloud and AI stack, shipped all the way down to a plant floor running robots, lasers, and IoT gear most software teams never get near. We're a new team building fast. Viaduct already has a sophisticated, battle-tested platform - AWS landing zone, Terraform, AKS, Postgres, ClickHouse, Argo, observability - with genuinely great bones. But that platform was built to host production SaaS applications, and our team's needs don't look like that. We need our own environment, built on the lessons of what already exists, but shaped around how we actually work: fast iteration, new tooling, production use cases shipping constantly. Who You Are You're an experienced software developer who's shipped end-to-end, from ideation to production, and doesn't flinch at getting into the weeds of a customer's environment when it counts. You care deeply about engineering best practices and know how to collaborate closely with a senior architect and own significant implementation decisions yourself, rather than waiting to be handed a spec. You like mentoring engineers as much as writing code. You write code to create impact in the real world, not just creating endless prototypes or building other people's ideas. What We Are Looking For We are looking for an experienced / senior engineer that can be very independent in their work, specifically in building and maintaining robust systems. The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications: Expected Skills Experience owning a project from design to implementation 5+ years working as back-end engineer Proficient in Python and Go Strong SQL skills with comfort in data querying and exploration Execution ability to drive progress under tight deadlines Leadership skills to attract, retain, and influence talented team members, and comfort mentoring less experienced engineers, are a plus Self-motivated and with a bias towards action Prior work in small, agile teams Expertise in one or more of: Building and managing large-scale batch or real-time data pipelines (Data) Developing, monitoring, and iterating on production machine learning models (Machine Learning) Deploying and maintaining cloud infrastructure (Infra/DevOps) Designing and implementing backend services (Backend) Security and Privacy Responsibilities Follow our policy and procedure documents related to security and privacy Follow the guidelines in the Employee Handbook Follow the OWASP Top 10 guidelines when implementing and reviewing code Participate in new hire and annual training for security and privacy Treat data security and privacy as one of your primary job responsibilities Report Security Incidents you discover as bugs Get approval from the Security Team before adding new 3rd party software to our codebase Explicitly consider security implications when doing PR reviews Position Details Compensation: Competitive base salary, short-term incentive (annual bonus) and long-term incentive (long-term upside) Travel: 0-20% (with significant occasional international travel component) Employment Type: Full Time Work site: Flexible (Ljubljana office and/or work from home) Team: Internal Efficiencies