Backend Data Engineer

Ruya AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company building AI-native intelligent software for sovereign institutions and their affiliated organizations operating in mission-critical, high-stakes environments. Headquartered in Massachusetts (US), with offices across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, we are expanding our engineering team with people who demonstrate strong ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to turn complex requirements into reliable products.

The Role

Quant is the team responsible for our multi-modal intelligence agent. Our software is built to surface hidden patterns across disparate data sources and generate predictive outcomes for the operators who rely on it.

As part of this team, you will build and own the backend services connecting our frontend, AI agent, databases, identity systems, and external data providers. You'll build and maintain the data pipelines and infrastructure that feed the Quant team's agent and evaluation systems, and keep those services reliable, scalable, and observable in production. You'll also work closely with our quant and AI engineers to expose the stable APIs and data contracts their tools and models depend on.

Core Responsibilities

• Design and maintain services using Python/FastAPI/TypeScript/Express.

• Build secure REST APIs, SSE streams, and WebSocket-based features.

• Own PostgreSQL schemas, migrations, transactions, and query performance.

• Support OIDC/JWT authentication and resource-scoped RBAC.

• Integrate external data providers and handle authentication, pagination, rate limits, schema variance, and failure states.

• Define stable, documented contracts for frontend and AI consumers.

• Build unit, contract, and database-backed integration tests.

• Instrument services with structured logging and diagnose production failures across APIs, databases, authentication, and external dependencies using tools such as Sentry, Langfuse, or alternatives.

• Collaborate with frontend and AI engineers throughout feature development and release.

Required Qualifications

• Strong production experience with Python/FastAPI/TypeScript/Express.

• Strong PostgreSQL knowledge, including schema design, migrations, transactions, and performance analysis.

• Experience with OAuth/OIDC, JWT validation, and authorization.

• Understanding of concurrency, idempotency, retries, timeouts, and distributed failure modes.

• Experience designing and testing stable service contracts.

• A security-conscious approach to input validation, credentials, sensitive data, and logging.

• Experience using logs, traces, and error monitoring to diagnose production issues.

• Clear communication and effective collaboration across engineering disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Python, FastAPI, Pydantic, or advanced asyncio.

• Snowflake, ClickHouse, or another analytical data platform.

• External API and data-provider integrations.

• Geospatial data, entity resolution.

• Graph-oriented data modeling.

• PostgreSQL-backed graph persistence or NetworkX.

• Containerized and distributed service environments.

• GCP or AWS.

• Durable background jobs or workflow systems such as Temporal.

• Equivalent experience with comparable frameworks and infrastructure is welcome.

Location

In the US, this role is based at our headquarters in Massachusetts, where much of the work takes place. Remote arrangements are also available in California, Massachusetts, Texas, Maryland, Virginia and across the US.

We also hire at our locations in Dubai (UAE), Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. Visa sponsorship and relocation assistance are available for our UAE and European locations.

Salary and Benefits

The salary range for this role is highly competitive and benchmarked to market. Total compensation may also include equity through Ruya AI's employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), a sign-on bonus, and other incentives over time. Final compensation reflects each candidate's qualifications, experience, skills, certifications, and work location. All offers are contingent on a satisfactory background check and, where applicable, a reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please contact your talent acquisition representative with any questions.

Our benefits are designed to support the health and wellbeing of every Ruyan. We regularly review and refine our offerings based on employee feedback. Below are some of the benefits and perks available to Ruya AI employees:

• Employees (and their eligible dependents) can enroll in medical, dental, and vision insurance

• Commuter benefits

• Relocation assistance

• Paid time off built into the end of each year (subject to team and business needs) and based on location

• A supportive leave-of-absence program, including time off for military service and medical events

Life at Ruya

Growth at Ruya AI isn't tied to a fixed ladder. We pay attention to what each Ruyan is good at and where they want to go, and we shape roles and opportunities around that. Health and wellbeing benefits are part of this investment, though specifics can vary by region.

We work primarily from our offices because in-person collaboration produces better outcomes, and most teams offer one or two remote days a week. A small number of roles are remote-eligible on an exception basis; employees in those roles must be based in the state where they're employed, and roles marked onsite require working from an office.

Ruya AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.