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Salary is split by company size rather than one flat range, which makes comparison easier. Local ranges are welcome.
POSITION 02 · Engineering · Backend Engineer
Backend Engineer
Hold up every visible feature from the invisible side
Backend engineers own server logic, data modelling, API design and reliability. Users never see it, but every order, payment and push depends on it.
Core responsibilities 01 / DUTY
- Design APIs and data models for consistency
- Handle concurrency, idempotency and transactions
- Build monitoring, limits and degradation
Required skills 02 / SKILL
A server language & runtimeSQL and index tuningCaching and queuesAPI design & securityObservability
Who this suits 06 / FIT
- Likes turning complexity into structure
- Patient with edge cases
FAQ 07 / FAQ
Go or Java?
Go fits concurrency and cloud-native tooling; Java fits complex enterprise systems. Engineering judgement matters more than the language.
Related industries & roles 08 / LINK
This role commonly appears in these industries and works with these roles:
Before you start · insider notes
Write down invariants first
Balance cannot go negative, order IDs are unique, states move one way — list them and the locking design follows.
Check the schema before release
Mismatch between migration scripts, docs and production is where most incidents begin.
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Company size × salary
Illustrative ranges · not official statistics · community-editableThe same role pays differently — and asks for different things — at different company sizes. Editorial reference ranges; corrections welcome.
| Company size | Monthly salary | What matters |
|---|---|---|
| Startup / <50 | 14–25K | Full-stack delivery, end to end |
| Growth / 50–500 | 20–36K | Service split & cache discipline |
| Large / 500–5k | 28–48K | Concurrency, reliability, capacity |
| Platform / >5k | 35–65K | Platform & multi-team architecture |
Abilities required
Five dimensions, level 1–5
System modeling
5/5
Collaboration
4/5
Business sense
4/5
Reliability
5/5
Debugging
4/5
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The interview questions are useful; a note on explaining your reasoning during live coding would help.
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