Software Engineer

Hoichoi is seeking talented engineers with a strong backend focus and an AI-native mindset to join our dynamic tech team in Kolkata, India. This critical role is central to our revenue infrastructure, encompassing payment orchestration, subscription lifecycle management, and high-scale backend systems. You will be responsible for designing, deploying, and scaling these systems, with every deployment directly impacting millions of users and significant revenue.

What You'll Own and Key Responsibilities:

• Take ownership of end-to-end technical decisions, including API contracts, data models, service boundaries, and integration patterns for our live, high-traffic streaming platform.
• Adopt an architectural-first approach: identify appropriate abstractions, lead trade-off discussions, and document decisions for team understanding and future development.
• Leverage AI-native development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot as integral parts of your workflow, focusing on maximizing output and retaining control over generated code.
• Lead technical design reviews for new features, proactively identifying risks, edge cases, and cross-system dependencies before development begins.
• Diagnose and resolve production issues across backend systems, tracing root causes, implementing robust fixes, and preventing recurrence through thoughtful design.
• Collaborate closely with product, growth, content, and data teams to translate rapidly evolving business requirements into scalable and maintainable backend solutions.
• Contribute to hoichoi Cortex, our central data aggregation and intelligence layer, by designing clear API contracts and data flows that integrate content signals, user behavior, and business metrics.
• Evaluate and integrate third-party services, LLM APIs, and external tools, making informed build-vs-buy-vs-compose decisions with clear justifications.
• Conduct code reviews to ensure code quality, readability, testability, and maintainability for future development.

What We're Looking For:

• 1–5+ years of backend engineering experience with proven production ownership, managing systems that real users rely on.
• Strong foundational knowledge in at least one backend programming language, with the ability to reason about system design, data modeling, and API contracts.
• Capability to analyze existing systems, understand their constraints, and propose architectural recommendations beyond executing assigned tasks.
• Experience working within fast-paced product teams accustomed to evolving requirements and shifting priorities.
• Proficiency in using AI coding tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, etc.) for developing and shipping features, with a demonstrated example of using AI-generated code that you evaluated, debugged, or refined.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to make independent decisions with incomplete information, knowing when to seek guidance.

Bonus Points For:

• Familiarity with streaming or media technologies (e.g., CDNs, adaptive bitrate, DRM, video processing).
• Experience with event-driven architectures, message queues (Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ), or distributed microservices.
• Prior work on data pipelines, analytics integrations, or internal developer tooling.
• Exposure to LLM APIs, prompt engineering, or AI-augmented product features deployed to users.

Note: Candidates are required to provide an active GitHub profile or portfolio for skill evaluation.