Staff Backend Engineer - Moderation

About the role

Cloudinary is building a large‑scale visual moderation product and is looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to lead the server‑side development. You will own the architecture, delivery, and operation of a high‑throughput, cost‑sensitive moderation platform that serves major customers.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build, and evolve the backend of a moderation platform handling massive image and video volumes.
• Implement high‑throughput asynchronous pipelines, multi‑tenant systems, and cost‑optimized ML workloads.
• Make architectural decisions that balance scalability, latency, cost, and operational complexity.
• Establish and maintain engineering best practices for testing, observability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Iteratively deliver value with a focus on customer impact while keeping long‑term quality in mind.

Required profile

• 10+ years of backend engineering experience delivering production systems.
• Strong hands‑on coding ability, comfortable working deep in the backend stack.
• Proven experience building and operating cloud‑native systems, preferably on AWS.
• Experience with distributed systems, async processing, queues, workflows, and production monitoring.
• Independent, collaborative, and comfortable navigating ambiguous, low‑process environments.

Required skills

• Python
• AWS
• Cloud‑native architecture
• Distributed systems
• Asynchronous processing
• Queues and workflow orchestration
• Production monitoring and observability

What we offer

• Full ownership of the product lifecycle from design to operation.
• Freedom to build with minimal process overhead.
• Supportive, people‑first culture within a stable, well‑established company.