Senior Backend Engineer - Generative AI / Personalization

Aquent is partnering with a globally recognized media leader that redefines how millions of users around the world experience audio. This innovative company is at the forefront of personalized listening, leveraging advanced AI to create highly engaging and dynamic interactive audio experiences. As they continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in digital audio, we're seeking visionary talent to join their mission.

Are you ready to shape the future of personalized audio on a global scale? We're seeking a highly skilled Backend Engineer to play a pivotal role in evolving our client's groundbreaking AI-powered interactive listening experiences. This is an incredible opportunity to impact millions of weekly active users worldwide, drive innovation in generative AI, and significantly influence the core architecture of an industry-leading platform. You'll be instrumental in scaling these advanced features across new languages and international markets, integrating cutting-edge Large Language Models with robust backend systems, and enhancing the very fabric of how users interact with personalized content.

What You'll Do

• High-Volume Backend Engineering: Design, build, scale, and maintain high-throughput, low-latency Java backend services that power interactive AI-driven audio experiences at an immense scale.
• Agentic Workflows & LLM Integration: Develop sophisticated agentic workflows, intricate skill integrations, and specialized tools that leverage established LLM systems (e.g., Anthropic, Google, Cohere), connecting internal microservices and databases to deliver dynamic AI features.
• Global Scale & Reliability: Drive the expansion and ensure the reliability of backend systems as the platform rapidly scales to support new languages and new international markets.
• Cross-Functional Architecture: Lead critical cross-stack architectural decisions, fostering close collaboration with client-side, mobile, C++ player engineers, Product Managers, and Data Scientists to deliver cohesive solutions.
• System Testing & Experimentation: Conduct rigorous backend experiments, innovating by replacing traditional services with LLM-generated content, all while maintaining exceptional performance, stability, and rapid iteration cycles.

What You'll Bring

Must-Have Qualifications

• Backend Expertise: A minimum of 6 years of hands-on engineering experience, demonstrating deep technical proficiency in core Java and a proven track record of building distributed, high-volume backend microservices.
• High-Scale/High-Velocity Background: Extensive experience maintaining production systems that effectively handle millions of users within high-volume, fast-paced environments, such as high-throughput tech platforms, large consumer internet products, or high-frequency systems.
• Applied AI / LLM Experience: Practical, hands-on experience in building agentic workflows, tool/API integrations, or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems on top of existing Large Language Models (Note: expertise in fine-tuning or building models from scratch is not required).
• Cross-Team Leadership: Demonstrated ability to drive architectural consensus and influence technical direction across diverse engineering teams, including mobile, player engines, and AI/ML.

About Skill:

Skill connects the best professional, IT, engineering, financial and administrative talent with the world's biggest brands. Our eligible talent get access to benefits such as health benefit contributions, retirement plans with match and flexible spending accounts.

Skill is an equal-opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics. We're about creating an inclusive environment-one where different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are valued, and everyone can contribute, grow their careers, and thrive.

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