Strong experience building backend services in Go (or similar language with willingness to learn Go) Solid understanding of modern API design, data modeling, and distributed systems basics, specifically GraphQL Practical experience deploying and operating systems on AWS Comfort with core AWS services (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB/RDS, S3, ECS/Fargate, CloudWatch, IAM) Experience leading a small engineering team or being the de-facto tech lead Able to manage priorities, set expectations, and give clear feedback Actively uses AI tools like ChatGPT/Claude/Copilot in real work Clear written and verbal communication Low-ego, pragmatic, and comfortable working in a fast-moving environment Experience with Flutter or native iOS/Android, or close collaboration with mobile teams (Nice-to-Have) Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK, etc.) (Nice-to-Have) Experience with Observability tooling (Nice-to-Have) Experience with Security and compliance considerations (Nice-to-Have) Prior experience in an early-stage startup (Nice-to-Have) Product intuition (Nice-to-Have)