Software Engineer Foundations

The Foundations team builds and evolves the application-level infrastructure that powers Hex. We own the shared backend systems frameworks and primitives that other teams depend on—helping the company move faster while maintaining reliability performance and security.

Our work spans APIs realtime transport storage frameworks background processing and internal tooling. Rather than shipping isolated features we focus on creating durable systems that scale with the company and make product development easier for everyone.

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to help design maintain and evolve the core systems used across Hex. This role is centered on backend architecture and shared infrastructure with responsibility for APIs realtime communication data access frameworks job orchestration and internal admin tooling.

You’ll work closely with product engineering teams to understand their needs then turn common patterns into robust reusable systems. You’ll help define standards influence architecture and raise the quality bar across the backend.

Frontend experience is helpful for understanding end-to-end workflows but this role is primarily backend-focused.

You will help contribute to and evolve several foundational areas including:

• GraphQL(schema design performance developer ergonomics)
• Authentication & authorization(security scalability correctness)
• Multiplayer & collaboration APIs(realtime state concurrency)

• WebSockets and realtime communication infrastructure

• Postgres (schema design query optimization migrations)
• S3 DynamoDB Redis

• BullMQ and background job processing
• Temporal or similar workflow orchestration systems

• Internal admin tools for debugging operations and customer support

• Design and build backend frameworks and services used across the company
• Own and evolve critical shared systems including APIs realtime transport and job orchestration
• Improve reliability performance observability and security of foundational backend infrastructure
• Partner with product teams to turn recurring needs into shared abstractions
• Lead technical design discussions and help set architectural direction
• Drive refactors migrations and system upgrades that reduce long-term complexity
• Improve internal tooling to support debugging operations and customer-facing workflows
• Mentor other engineers and contribute to strong engineering standards and practices

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with a strong backend focus
• Experience working with Typescript/Node.js and SQL
• Experience building and maintaining shared backend systems or frameworks used by multiple teams
• Strong understanding of API design distributed systems and asynchronous workflows
• Experience working with relational databases and data modeling at scale
• Familiarity with background job systems queues or workflow orchestration tools
• Comfort operating and evolving production systems over time
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred)
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative leverage-oriented mindset

• Experience with Python
• Hands-on experience with GraphQL WebSockets BullMQ or Temporal
• Familiarity with observability tooling (metrics tracing logging)
• Background in data platforms developer tools or collaborative systems
• Experience with frontend technologies (e.g. React TypeScript) for end-to-end context
• Open-source contributions especially in backend or infrastructure projects

Our product is a web-based notebook and app authoring platform. Our frontend is built with Typescript and React using a combination of Apollo GraphQL and Redux for managing application state and data. On the backend we also use Typescript to power an Express/Apollo GraphQL server that interacts with Postgres Redis and Kubernetes to manage our database and Python kernels. Our backend is tightly integrated with our infrastructure and CI/CD where we use a combination of Terraform Helm and AWS to deploy and maintain our stack.

In addition to our unique culture Hex proudly offers a competitive total rewards package including but not limited to market-benched salary & equity comprehensive health benefits and flexible paid time off.

The salary range for this role is: $215000 - $270000

The salary range shown may be a reflection of additional factors such as geographical location and skill ranges/levels we’re open to. Placement in the salary range will be decided upon completion of the interview process taking into account factors like leaving room for growth internal fairness & parity your demonstrated skills and the depth of your experience. Our Recruiting team will be able to provide more details during the interview process.

By submitting an application the candidate consents to the use of their personal information in accordance with the Hex Privacy policy: https://learn.hex.tech/docs/trust/privacy-policy.

What We Do

Hex is changing the way people work with data. Our platform makes analytics workflows more powerful collaborative and shareable. Hex solves key pain points with today's data and analytics tooling and is loved by thousands of users all over the world for the beautiful UI new superpowers and boundless flexibility. We are a tight-knit crew of engineers designers and data aficionados. Our roadmap is full of big ideas and little details and we would love your help bringing them to life. Hex has raised over $100m from great VCs and angels giving us many years of runway and the ability to pay competitive salaries offer great benefits and provide meaningful equity.

Why Work With Us

We’re a team of builders. We spend our days designing and developing beautiful products growing and supporting our user base and helping each other succeed and learn. To do that we've developed a culture focused on quality craft and speed -- with very few meetings bias toward action and taking care of each other through feedback and support.

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