Director of Backend Engineering

Compensation: $120k – $140k CAD • 1.0% – 3.0%

Director of Backend Engineering

**Hands-On Backend Development | AWS Architecture | Cloud Cost Optimization ** Company: Albumolic Location: Toronto, Canada / Remote Type: Full-Time Reports To: Head of Engineering

About Albumolic Albumolic is building a new generation of music technology that combines album sales, streaming, fan commerce, and royalty participation.

We're developing a platform designed to transform how artists monetize their music and how fans participate in the music economy.

The Opportunity We're seeking a highly experienced, hands-on Director of Backend Engineering who can personally design, write, build, deploy, and maintain production backend systems, while overseeing and optimizing our AWS infrastructure.

This is not a traditional management-only position.

The successful candidate must be an exceptional backend software engineer first, with deep practical experience in AWS infrastructure, database engineering, system scalability, and cloud cost optimization.

You'll work directly with our Head of Engineering to develop new platform features, improve existing backend systems, and ensure that our technology remains secure, efficient, reliable, and scalable.

Key Responsibilities

• Backend Software Development

• Personally write, build, test, debug, and deploy production-level backend code.

• Design and develop backend APIs, services, business logic, and database integrations.

• Build new backend functionality supporting music streaming, album purchases, fan accounts, artist dashboards, royalty participation, and transaction processing.

• Develop secure and scalable REST and GraphQL APIs.

• Improve the performance, architecture, and maintainability of existing backend systems.

• Implement automated testing, code reviews, and continuous integration practices.

• Collaborate with iOS and frontend engineers to deliver new product features.

• AWS Infrastructure & Architecture

• Manage, maintain, and improve Albumolic's AWS backend infrastructure.

• Architect and deploy cloud services using applicable AWS technologies.

• Improve database efficiency, server performance, scalability, and application availability.

• Establish monitoring, logging, automated backups, and disaster recovery procedures.

• Build and maintain reliable CI/CD deployment pipelines.

• Maintain security standards and appropriate infrastructure access controls.

• AWS Cost Optimization

• AWS infrastructure and identify opportunities to reduce operating expenses.

• Optimize databases, compute resources, storage, API operations, and CDN delivery.

• Eliminate unnecessary cloud spending and improve infrastructure efficiency.

• Implement AWS cost monitoring, budgets, forecasting, and automated alerts.

• Design backend systems that can scale economically as platform usage increases.

• Technical Leadership

• Report directly to the Head of Engineering.

• Take ownership of backend technical execution and infrastructure operations.

• Establish engineering standards, documentation, and development processes.

• Mentor engineers as the technical team expands.

• Remain actively involved in coding and technical problem-solving.

• Required Experience

• 8+ years of professional backend software engineering experience.

• Expert-level coding ability in one or more modern backend languages, with proficiency in our existing backend stack.

• Extensive hands-on experience building and operating AWS-hosted production applications.

• Deep knowledge of databases, distributed systems, API development, and backend application architecture.

• Proven ability to independently develop and deliver complex backend features from concept to production.

• Demonstrated AWS cost optimization experience with measurable results.

• Strong experience in backend security, infrastructure automation, CI/CD, and performance optimization.

• Experience supporting high-traffic consumer platforms.

Preferred: Experience with music technology, media streaming, fintech, digital commerce, financial ledgers, or royalty management systems.

What We're Looking For

We want a technical leader who can identify an architectural problem, open the codebase, write the solution, deploy it safely, and ensure it runs efficiently on AWS.

You must be as comfortable writing sophisticated backend code as you are architecting cloud infrastructure along with mindfulness for cost optimization .

Candidates with primarily project management, IT administration, or infrastructure-only backgrounds will not be suitable.

Founding Engineering Team & Potential Equity Participation

This is more than an engineering position. It's an opportunity to join Albumolic's founding engineering team and potentially become an equity shareholder in the company.

We're looking for someone who wants to build more than technology — someone who wants to help shape a company with the ambition to redefine the global music economy.

As an early technical leader, you'll have the opportunity to influence our core architecture, contribute to long-term product strategy, and play a meaningful role in the company's growth.

Equity participation may be offered to the right candidate, subject to mutually agreed terms, company approvals, and applicable vesting arrangements.

Why Albumolic?

Join an emerging music technology company building an entirely new model for music distribution, monetization, and fan participation.

You'll work directly with senior leadership, take responsibility for critical platform infrastructure, and have the opportunity to help shape the technical foundation of a potentially category-defining music technology company.