Join us as a Backend Lead and drive the development of the backend platform behind one of the fastest-growing AI products in the US market. We are looking for a strong technical leader who combines deep expertise in high-load system architecture with hands-on experience in building and scaling engineering teams.
In this role, you will have true ownership of our AI Gateway, generative pipelines, and mission-critical backend services powering a product already trusted by more than 1.5 million users.
About the company
Zeely AI is an AI-powered platform that helps small businesses create viral UGC videos, advertising banners, and high-performing campaigns across Meta and TikTok, making it easier for entrepreneurs to grow and scale their businesses.
Your key responsibilities:
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Lead the Backend Department, driving team growth, planning, estimations, code reviews, mentoring, and engineers’ performance management
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Define the architectural vision and ensure the reliability, scalability, and performance of the backend platform
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Develop and evolve our AI orchestration layer across multiple models and providers, optimizing generation quality, latency, and cost efficiency
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Own the evolution of the AI Gateway — the core platform component powering text, image, voice, avatar, and video generation
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Scale infrastructure and backend services to support product growth and increasing workloads
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Maintain high engineering standards in code quality, security, observability, and operational excellence
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Deliver strategic AI initiatives, including our proprietary RAG pipeline, MCP integrations, and AI agent capabilities
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Collaborate closely with Frontend, Mobile, QA, AI Engineering, and DevOps teams to achieve business goals
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Partner with the Principal Engineer on infrastructure capacity planning and cost optimization
What we’re looking for:
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7+ years of commercial experience with Node.js
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3+ years of experience in a Lead, Team Lead, or Engineering Manager role with direct people management responsibilities
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3+ years of hands-on experience with NestJS
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Proven experience designing and evolving microservice architectures in production environments
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Deep expertise in PostgreSQL and Redis
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Experience working with ORMs such as Prisma and Drizzle
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Hands-on experience with AWS services, including EKS, RDS, SQS, S3, CloudWatch, and OpenSearch
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Strong Docker expertise
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Experience designing reliable, scalable, and observable distributed systems
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Solid understanding of on-call processes and incident management practices
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Upper-Intermediate English level or higher
Nice to have:
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Active AWS Architect or Developer certification
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Experience with Terraform
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Experience building high-load systems and optimizing cost/latency trade-offs
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Payment systems integration experience
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Backend development experience for mobile applications (iOS/Android) and web products
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Experience with GCP and Cloudflare
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Experience hiring engineers and building processes in fast-scaling organizations
AI expertise we value:
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Commercial experience integrating AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others)
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Understanding of multi-model orchestration, including routing, fallback strategies, and cost/latency trade-offs
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Experience with AI-assisted development and code review tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, etc.)
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Understanding of RAG, embeddings, MCP, and AI agents (hands-on experience is a strong plus)
Why it’s exciting to work with us:
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Work with cutting-edge technologies and contribute to building AI-powered tools
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Join a strong A-level team that motivates you to grow and achieve more
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Remote-first approach: work from anywhere, with the option to visit our offices in Warsaw and Kyiv
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Paid day offs and sick leaves — we care about your work-life balance
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Regular performance reviews to ensure your growth is transparent and rewarded
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Financial support — consultations for private entrepreneurs from our dedicated finance team
Recruitment process:
Intro Call → Test Task → Technical Interview → Final Interview → Reference Check → Offer