[Hiring] IoT Platform Architect & Backend Lead @Flatgigs

Role Description

We are building a multi-tenant, hardware-agnostic IoT platform from the ground up. We need a senior engineer who can design the system architecture in the morning and write production backend code in the afternoon. This is not an architecture-only role and not a coding-only role — it is both, simultaneously, in a fast-moving early-stage environment. You will also own cloud infrastructure as interim DevOps until we scale.

Qualifications

• 7–12 years software or systems engineering; minimum 4 years specifically building IoT platform backends or connected product infrastructure
• Expert-level, hands-on experience with AWS IoT Core or Azure IoT Hub — production deployments, not tutorials ⚑ NON-NEGOTIABLE
• Expert MQTT knowledge: v3.1 and v5.0, topic hierarchy design, QoS levels, retained messages, Last Will & Testament, broker sizing and clustering ⚑ NON-NEGOTIABLE
• Proficiency in Python and Node.js/TypeScript for production backend services — Go is a strong advantage
• Hands-on experience with a time-series database: InfluxDB, TimescaleDB, or AWS Timestream
• Terraform or AWS CloudFormation — you provision cloud infrastructure programmatically, not through the console
• Multi-tenant SaaS backend architecture: data isolation patterns, tenant-scoped access control, shared infrastructure design
• Security fundamentals applied in practice: TLS/mTLS, X.509 certificates, OAuth 2.0, JWT, secrets management (Vault or AWS Secrets Manager)
• Message broker or streaming experience: Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS Kinesis, or AWS IoT Rules Engine
• Proven ability to work autonomously at a senior level — makes decisions, documents rationale, flags risks without needing to be prompted ⚑ REMOTE DISCIPLINE

Requirements

• Design the full end-to-end IoT platform architecture: device connectivity layer → MQTT/protocol ingestion → stream processing → time-series storage → REST/GraphQL API layer → real-time WebSocket delivery
• Define the multi-tenant data model: strict data isolation between customers, tenant-scoped API tokens, row-level security
• Design the device lifecycle system: provisioning, X.509/JWT authentication, device registry, status tracking, decommissioning
• Architect the protocol abstraction layer so MQTT, Modbus, OPC-UA, CoAP, and HTTP devices all normalise to the same internal data model
• Design a configurable rule engine: event-condition-action rules for alerts, automations, and integrations — no code required from customers
• Plan OTA firmware update management: secure delivery, versioning, rollback, fleet orchestration
• Write Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for every major technical choice — nothing undocumented
• Design the scaling path from 100 devices (pilot) to 500,000+ (production) without structural rework
• Build core platform services from scratch: device management, telemetry ingestion, rule engine, notification/alerting, OTA update, multi-tenant API gateway
• Develop REST and GraphQL APIs with full OpenAPI specification — version-controlled from Day 1
• Implement WebSocket and SSE endpoints for real-time telemetry delivery to web and mobile clients
• Build device command-and-control with acknowledgement, retry logic, and timeout handling
• Implement device shadow service: last-known state of every device accessible even when offline
• Write unit, integration, and load tests — no service reaches staging without test coverage
• Own service reliability: SLO definitions, alerting runbooks, on-call incident response
• Provision and manage all AWS environments (dev, staging, production) using Terraform — no click-ops
• Configure AWS IoT Core: MQTT endpoint, topic namespace, rules engine, certificate management
• Set up CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions for all backend services
• Configure CloudWatch monitoring, log aggregation, and automated health alerts
• Manage IAM for all team members — least-privilege access, no shared credentials
• Hand off infrastructure fully documented when a DevOps engineer joins in Phase 2

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Flexible working hours
• Remote work options
• Health and wellness benefits
• Professional development opportunities