Sr. Backend Software Engineer (Data/ETL)

Respondology is the leader in AI-powered social comment moderation. We are now expanding our best-in-class AI technology to enable brands to listen and respond to people in their social communities.  With over 500 brands on its platform reaching 2 billion people per month, Respondology is modernizing social marketing, while eradicating hate speech from social media. #TechnologyForGood.

Respondology is seeking a Backend Software Engineer with deep data engineering expertise to build and scale our ingestion pipelines and knowledge base infrastructure. This is a critical role in architecting high-throughput data systems that power Respondology’s  AI-driven product suite. You'll design scrapers, API integrations, and ETL pipelines that process millions of data points daily across multiple storage systems. 

If you're excited about building robust data infrastructure and solving complex scalability challenges, we'd love to hear from you!

A day in the life:

• Design and build data ingestion pipelines integrating with dozens of external sources (social platforms, third-party APIs, web scrapers)
• Architect ETL workflows using Airflow and Kafka to process high-volume data streams (millions of records daily)
• Collaborate with AI/ML engineers to ensure data quality and availability for Agentic RAG pipelines
• Build and optimize multi-store data architecture: vector databases (Pinecone), relational databases (Postgres), and search engines (OpenSearch)
• Develop and maintain integrations with social media platforms (Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, X/Twitter) handling webhook ingestion and API polling
• Optimize data freshness, throughput, and reliability across distributed systems
• Participate in code reviews and contribute to backend services (FastAPI/Python, occasional Ruby on Rails)
  

Here's what you need to get our attention:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related degree; or equivalent work experience
• Minimum 5 years of professional software engineering experience
• Minimum 4 years proven experience building data pipelines and ETL workflows in Python
• Minimum 3 years experience with workflow orchestration tools (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or similar)
• Minimum 3 years working with multiple data storage technologies (relational, vector, search engines)
• Experience with message queues and event streaming (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS/SNS)
• Proven experience building high-throughput, fault-tolerant systems (we process 100s of millions of comments per year)
• Strong understanding of API design, rate limiting, and webhook handling
• Experience with data quality monitoring and observability
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership of projects, prioritize tasks, and deliver high-quality results independently

Here's what will make us call you for sure:

• Experience building and/or working with RAG pipelines to provide context to cutting edge AI Agents
• Significant experience with AWS data services (Kinesis, S3, RDS, Redshift, SQS/SNS)
• Experience with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant) or embedding-based retrieval systems
• Deep knowledge of OpenSearch/Elasticsearch for large-scale search and analytics
• Experience with social media platform APIs and webhook integrations
• Familiarity with modern ML/AI workflows and serving infrastructure
• Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Experience with APM and data pipeline monitoring (we use DataDog)
• Background in web scraping at scale with anti-bot mitigation strategies
• Experience working at a rapidly-growing tech startup
• FastAPI and Pydantic expertise

Compensation: 

$140,000 - $165,000 annually, DOE plus equity

Location: 

This is a 100% remote role. 

And if we haven't convinced you yet, here is why you'll want to be part of our team:

• We have a values-led culture with team members who have your back.
• Our product is making the world a better place—you will make an impact.
• Everyone is an owner—equity is included for all employees.
• 100% remote or you may come into our beautiful offices if you’re near Boulder, CO—dogs welcome (our in-house happy hours are always fun).
• Twice yearly off-sites to enjoy time together as a team.
• Flex PTO plan, generous holidays and off-week between Christmas and New Years.
• Multiple healthcare options, including plans with FSA and HSA
• Matching traditional and Roth 401k—immediately vested
• Family and paternity leave
• Life Insurance

COME AS YOU ARE: Your gender, your gods, your sex life, your skin color or your big shot uncle don't make a difference here. Respondology is a progressive and open-minded meritocracy. If you're smart and good at what you do, come as you are.