Principal / Architect Backend Engineer

*Company Description*Take the next step in your career now, scroll down to read the full role description and make your application.*KwikKart is a startup *building a hardware-enabled AI platform for physical grocery retail. Our patented AI/CV-powered smart tablet installs on grocery carts to enhance the shopping experience, while creating the infrastructure for real-time store intelligence, digital media, and data analytics for the grocery ecosystem.*Role Description*We are seeking a full-time Principal Backend Engineer to join our team on-site in Austin, TX / Hybrid. In this role, you will design, develop, and maintain scalable, efficient backend systems to power KwikKart’s innovative solutions. You will collaborate with teams to integrate backend services with front-end applications, maintain our hardware architecture, and optimize performance.************************************************************************************************************What We're Looking For**Someone who can manage a leadership role in a startup environment, and can take initiative, manage themselves, and lead a small team of dedicated engineers. This is a core role for our growing company, and will be considered for a significant equity stake, depending on long-term mutual fit *********************************************************************************************************** **What You Will Do** Design and implement backend features using .NET, Orleans, and vertical-slice / CQRS patterns.* Own grain contracts, orchestration flows, and state evolution across domains such as carts, orders, inventory, promotions, customer data, and event processing.* Build and maintain internal and external APIs, webhook flows, telemetry ingestion, and device synchronization services.* Improve system reliability, latency, and scale across caching, persistence, concurrency, and failure handling.* Define and enforce clear domain boundaries, contracts, and multi-tenant isolation practices.* Write and review high-quality automated tests across unit, grain, integration, and contract layers.* Partner with platform engineering on deployment readiness, observability, and performance tuning.* Help establish practical engineering standards and mentor other developers.*Required Experience** 8+ years in backend software engineering.* Strong C# / .NET experience.* Linux OS* Strong experience with distributed systems, event-driven patterns, or actor-model systems.* Experience designing APIs and service contracts in production systems.* Strong understanding of concurrency, consistency, retries, idempotency, and fault tolerance.* Experience with PostgreSQL or similar databases, Redis/caching, and production observability.* Strong testing discipline and code review habits.*Preferred Experience** Direct Orleans experience.* Experience with CQRS, MediatR, vertical-slice architecture, or DDD-style service design.* Experience in multi-tenant SaaS or retail / commerce systems.* Familiarity with Citus, Couchbase, telemetry pipelines, or edge / device synchronization systems.* Experience working in Azure-hosted production systems.*What success looks like in 3 months** Owns at least one major domain end to end.* Improves release confidence and backend velocity.* Reduces architectural drift and hidden operational risk. xibtplm * Produces production-ready features with strong tests and low rework.Pay: Up to $72,000.00 per yearWork Location: Hybrid remote in Austin, TX 78789