[Hiring] Senior Backend and AI Engineer @Axented

Role Description

This is a contractor role through X-Team supporting one of the world's largest media and information services companies. You will join a newsroom transformation team, working at the core of a global content system to build intelligent retrieval and reasoning on top of a very large archive of journalism. You will design and build AI-powered search and discovery experiences using multi-modal retrieval and agentic workflows. The role is heavily backend focused:

• Python-based AI systems alongside scalable Node.js services delivering production-grade APIs.
• Day to day includes LLM orchestration with LangChain, retrieval augmented generation grounded in trusted news content, model fine-tuning support in Python, and observability across the AI stack.
• Act as the interface between the European backend team and stakeholders in the US, UK, and Australia.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in backend or distributed systems engineering.
• Strong Node.js, TypeScript, and Express.js, with at least basic Python.
• Hands-on experience with AI orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or OpenAI AgentKit, including prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and RAG architectures.
• Docker and CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI).
• Infrastructure as code with Terraform.
• Experience designing scalable APIs and microservices for complex data systems.
• Deep understanding of AWS or another major cloud provider (the client prefers Google Cloud).
• Strong communication skills and experience collaborating across multiple engineering teams.

Requirements

• Media, publishing, or newsroom technology experience, especially large-scale content or digital journalism environments.
• Familiarity with legacy systems (PHP) and migration work.
• Startup or fast-paced product experience, including go-to-market exposure.
• Experience with globally distributed teams across time zones.

Who does well here

• Strong ownership mindset, able to drive work independently in ambiguous environments.
• Clear communicator with global technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Collaborative and team-first across distributed engineering teams.
• Proactive and solutions-oriented, anticipating issues and proposing improvements.
• Comfortable in fast-moving, AI-driven product environments.

Benefits

• Salary: 40 - 45 USD Per hour