Senior Backend Engineer (Contractor)

Senior Backend Engineer (Contractor)

• Location: Remote — Eastern Europe or LATAM
• Engagement: Contractor
• Experience: Senior, 5+ years
• Time zone: Must consistently overlap with U.S. working hours

About Hauler Hero

Hauler Hero builds the operating system for residential and commercial waste haulers, including dispatch, routing, billing, payments, customer management, reporting, and the driver app that ties field operations together.

Our customers are private hauler owners, operators, and municipal waste leaders running essential services every day. Many are still managing their businesses through paper tickets, whiteboards, spreadsheets, disconnected systems, and legacy software. The result is missed revenue, messy routes, limited visibility, and too much time spent fighting fires instead of growing the business.

Today, we serve 240+ haulers across the country and are scaling quickly. We are a well-funded, fast-moving vertical SaaS company bringing modern software to an essential industry where the customer need is clear and the opportunity is large.

Role Summary

We are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and evolve the core backend services that power Hauler Hero’s platform.

This is a 100% hands-on senior individual contributor role focused on building scalable, reliable, and maintainable systems used daily by waste hauling companies across North America.

You will work closely with Product, Frontend, and Platform Engineering to ship features, improve system robustness, and continuously refactor existing services as the platform scales. This role requires strong technical judgment, comfort with ambiguity, and clear communication in a remote environment.

AI-First Backend Engineering

We are intentionally building an AI-assisted engineering organization. AI tools are part of the daily workflow, not optional.

What this means in practice:

Daily use of tools such as Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot

AI-assisted implementation of Spring Boot services, APIs, database migrations, and business logic

AI-assisted test generation, refactoring suggestions, and code review support

AI-assisted log analysis, debugging, and issue investigation

You remain accountable for reviewing, validating, and owning everything AI produces

Speed matters, but correctness, performance, and maintainability matter more.

This role is not a fit for engineers who are resistant to AI-assisted development or who rely on AI output without understanding the underlying system.

Key Responsibilities

Core Backend Development

Design, build, and maintain robust backend service layers

Write clean, testable, high-performance code in Java and/or Kotlin using Spring Boot

Design and implement APIs that scale with real production workloads

Refactor and extend existing services to improve reliability and maintainability

Create reusable components and patterns that improve team velocity

Data and Performance

Design and optimize relational schemas in PostgreSQL

Write and tune performant SQL queries for large data volumes

Validate that database access patterns scale under load

Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across services

Collaboration and Delivery

Work as part of a cross-functional Agile or Scrum team

Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and architectural discussions

Collaborate with Frontend and Product teams on feature development

Debug and resolve production issues as they arise

Contribute to improving engineering processes and practices

Mentorship and Culture

Mentor engineers through code reviews and technical discussions

Contribute to a culture of learning, iteration, and constructive feedback

Share context proactively to avoid knowledge silos

Required Qualifications

Experience

5+ years of experience building production backend systems

Experience designing and operating systems with distributed data and meaningful scale

Experience working in Agile or Scrum environments

Strong experience with Git and GitHub workflows

Core Technologies

Strong proficiency with Spring Boot using Java and/or Kotlin

Deep experience with relational databases, especially PostgreSQL

Experience building and maintaining production APIs

Experience refactoring toward or within microservice architectures

Skills

Ability to translate product requirements into technical solutions

Strong problem-decomposition and debugging skills

Solid computer science fundamentals and engineering judgment

Clear written and verbal English communication skills

Nice to Have

Experience with Node.js or React

Messaging and communication platforms such as SendGrid or Twilio

Event-driven architectures

Geospatial or location-based systems

Payments or financial integrations

Background in logistics, fintech, or B2B SaaS

Our Tech Stack

Backend: Java, Kotlin, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL

Cloud: Google Cloud Platform, including GKE, Cloud Run, and Cloud SQL

Caching and Data: Redis, Firestore

Frontend: React

CI/CD: Cloud Build, GitHub Actions

Monitoring: New Relic, Google Operations

What We Look For

Ownership and Judgment

You take problems through to resolution

You balance pragmatism with quality

You identify and eliminate single points of failure

Communication

Clear, proactive written communication in English

Comfort working asynchronously across time zones

Willingness to surface risks and tradeoffs early

Mindset

Curious, growth-oriented, and adaptable

Comfortable with ambiguity and iteration

Willing to refactor continuously as systems evolve

What Success Looks Like

Backend services are reliable, scalable, and maintainable

Features ship consistently with minimal rework

Production issues are diagnosable and resolved quickly

Database and API performance scales with usage

Strong trust from Frontend, Product, and Platform teams

Contractor and Location Notes

This is a contractor role, not full-time employment

Senior-level ownership and reliability are expected

This role is open to candidates located in Eastern Europe or LATAM

Consistent overlap with U.S. working hours is required