Backend Engineer

About the Interactive Systems group

In the Interactive Systems group, we develop AI capabilities that enable robots to interact safely with humans, other robots, and systems. For a robot to be truly useful, it must represent its knowledge of the world, share what it learns, and interact with other agents, particularly humans. Our research integrates expertise in human-robot interaction, natural language processing, speech, information retrieval, data management, and low-code/no-code programming to create AI components that empower next-generation robots to perform complex real-world tasks.

The position

We are looking for an experienced Backend Engineer. The position requires a solid software engineering foundation, experience with production systems, and the ability to work effectively within multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the design, development and maintenance of scalable, production-ready backend systems.
• Work on backend services supporting complex platforms, including cyber-physical systems, robotics systems, data pipelines and AI-driven applications.
• Collaborate with research scientists and engineers to translate concepts into reliable software deployed in real-world environments.

What we're looking for

Candidates are not expected to meet all of the following criteria; however, experience in several of these areas will be considered beneficial:

Backend & Application Development

• Experience in backend development using Java (Spring / Spring Boot), including RESTful API design and implementation.
• Familiarity with the Java ecosystem and build tools such as Maven or Gradle.
• Understanding of software architecture patterns, testing practices and performance considerations.
• Experience working with production-grade systems.
• Familiarity with data pipelines, messaging systems (e.g. Kafka, RabbitMQ) or real-time systems.
• Knowledge of distributed systems, APIs and microservices architectures.

DevOps & Infrastructure

• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and cloud-based environments.
• Understanding of system scalability, monitoring and reliability in production environments.

Software Engineering Practices

• Proficiency in Git and modern development workflows.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, testable and well-documented code.
• Attention to performance, scalability and maintainability.

Collaboration & Communication

• Ability to work effectively in collaborative, multidisciplinary environments.
• Good communication skills in English (written and spoken).

Nice to have

• Experience with frontend technologies such as React, TypeScript or similar frameworks.
• Exposure to AI/ML systems, particularly in integrating models into production.
• Familiarity with observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
• Experience with high-performance or low-latency systems.