Backend Engineer (Product & Reliability)

THE PRODUCT

Friday.Social is a new kind of social calendar for real life. Not work – the other stuff. Dinners, weekend trips, spontaneous plans, group hangs. We're building the simplest way for friends to make plans and actually show up for each other.

The product is currently in late-stage product testing with a working system and infrastructure already running in production. Our backend supports event feeds, social updates, notifications, and real-time interactions.

We are looking for a backend engineer to strengthen system reliability, improve observability, and help stabilize core backend flows as we move toward launch and early growth. As the product evolves, this role will also contribute to improving performance and preparing the system to scale.

THE ROLE

You will primarily focus on backend reliability, performance and scalability.

Examples of work include:

• Investigating and resolving production issues and edge cases
• Improving reliability of core backend flows
• Improving API performance and reducing latency
• Optimizing database queries and indexes
• Designing scalable feed generation systems
• Improving caching strategies
• Building reliable background job processing
• Supporting real-time features (WebSockets)
• Improving system observability, logging and monitoring
• Preparing infrastructure for scaling to thousands of users

You will also collaborate on product features such as:

• Event feeds and social activity streams
• Notifications and messaging systems
• User activity and status updates
• AI-powered assistant features

Current Tech Stack

Backend

• Python
• Django
• Django REST Framework
• ASGI + WebSockets

Infrastructure

• Render.com
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Celery
• n8n (automation workflows)

Storage & Services

• AWS S3
• Google Maps API
• Gemini AI (for assistant features)

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Someone who is genuinely comfortable in production – not just building features, but owning reliability, diagnosing issues under pressure, and working through complex debugging scenarios across multiple parts of the stack.

Strong experience with:

• Python backend development
• Django or similar frameworks
• PostgreSQL and database optimization
• API design, debugging and performance tuning
• Caching (Redis)
• Background job systems (Celery / workers)

Nice to have:

• Experience with real-time systems (WebSockets)
• Observability tools and performance monitoring
• Scaling social feeds or high-traffic APIs
• Cloud infrastructure (Render, AWS, GCP)
• AI integration experience

Targeting 4 to 8 years of experience in backend engineering. We care more about what you have actually debugged and fixed in production. Experience supporting systems through product launch, improving system performance and designing scalable architectures as products grow is highly desirable.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

In the first few months, you will help:

• Improve the reliability and stability of core backend flows
• Investigate and resolve production issues and edge case
• Improve system visibility through better logging, monitoring, and diagnostics
• Optimize key API endpoints and database queries
• Support the team in stabilizing the product ahead of launch

Over time, you will also contribute to:

• Improving system performance under increasing usage
• Evolving backend architecture as the product grows.

---

Singapore · Immediate · Full-time (On Site)· 6-9 month contract potential for conversion