Senior Cloud Backend Engineer

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer

What we are: Fun, fast-paced, client-focused, people-centric, inviting, flexible, and rapidly growing.

What we are not: Overly structured, uncompromising, disengaged, or disconnected.

We build large-scale industrial IoT software systems that ingest, process, and analyze data from hundreds of thousands of connected devices. We're looking for a Senior Cloud Platform Engineer to join a small, senior engineering team responsible for modernizing our cloud platform. This is an excellent opportunity for an engineer who enjoys solving real-world production challenges while continuing to grow technically. You'll help migrate legacy services to modern serverless architectures, build scalable backend systems, and gradually take ownership of critical cloud services under the mentorship of experienced engineers. As your knowledge and confidence grow, so will the complexity and impact of the systems you own.

Technologies We Use: AWS, Serverless Architectures (Lambda), Python, PHP, SQS / Kinesis / event-driven systems, PostgreSQL / MySQL / DynamoDB, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Observability and logging platforms, and more.

Company Description

We are a leading provider of wireless, mesh-networked, "Internet of Things" (IoT) sensors for industrial environments. Our cost-effective, plug-and-play products empower plants of all sizes to conduct predictive and preventative maintenance on mission-critical and secondary equipment in order to maximize uptime. Our innovative sensors, machine learning, services, and solutions have been revolutionizing this industry for the past 15 years.

Reports to: Chief Technology Officer

Location: Based in the United States - Cincinnati, OH or Huntsville, AL preferred

Job Type: Remote or onsite with remote flexibility

Travel: Minimal travel required

Work Authorization: Must be authorized to work in the U.S. **Sponsorship is not available at this time**

Exemption Status: exempt

Job Description

This position will give you the opportunity to:

• Migrate business-critical scheduled jobs from legacy infrastructure to modern serverless cloud services
• Build, enhance, and maintain backend services and telemetry ingestion pipeline components running on AWS
• Gradually assume ownership of cloud services currently supported by other engineering teams, allowing them to focus on their core product areas
• Develop and maintain automated tests that make platform migrations safe, repeatable, and reliable
• Contribute to Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and operational improvements alongside the engineering team
• Participate in the team's on-call rotation as you become familiar with the platform
• Leverage AI-assisted development, testing, and code review as part of your daily engineering workflow
• Collaborate closely with senior engineers and technical leadership while documenting what you learn and sharing knowledge across the team
• Continuously expand your technical ownership as your experience and confidence grow
• Carry out additional responsibilities as needed to support business objectives

Qualifications & Requirements:

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud services such as Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, RDS, or similar technologies
• Development experience using Python and/or PHP
• Strong desire to learn unfamiliar systems quickly while working through complex modernization efforts with attention to quality
• Solid software testing practices and an understanding of how testing enables safe production migrations
• Experience using AI-assisted software development tools and workflows
• Strong communication skills with a collaborative, documentation-focused mindset

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with serverless and event-driven architectures
• Experience building or supporting data ingestion pipelines, messaging systems, queues, or streams
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines such as GitHub Actions
• Experience with observability, monitoring, and logging platforms
• Exposure to industrial IoT, telemetry, or other data-intensive cloud platforms

What Success Looks Like:

• Legacy scheduled jobs and backend services are successfully migrated to modern cloud infrastructure with minimal operational risk
• Cloud services transition smoothly from other engineering teams with little disruption, allowing those teams to focus on their primary responsibilities
• Work is consistently well-tested, documented, and repeatable
• Technical ownership and autonomy increase steadily as experience grows
• Engineering teams can confidently deploy, monitor, and support backend services in production
• Platform reliability, scalability, and maintainability continue to improve through thoughtful engineering practices

Culture Fit Requirements:

• High intellect and strong analytical skills
• Innovative and driven to constantly improve
• Non-bureaucratic, flexible, and able to thrive in a fast-moving environment
• Positive energy and attitude towards people and problem-solving
• Demonstrates a balance of humility, strong work ethic, and interpersonal savvy ("Humble, Hungry, and Smart") in approach to teamwork and problem-solving.
• A genuine human.
• Demonstrates a “Can Do” mentality.

Why Waites?

At Waites, we offer an attractive base salary with a strong history of profit sharing. We are intensely customer-focused, with a culture that encourages hard work, fun, and mutual success. As we continue to grow, there will be many opportunities for professional advancement and development. If you are a talented Cloud Engineer professional looking for an exciting new challenge, please apply!

Learn more about who we are and what we do by checking out our website at www.waites.net.

WST is an Equal Opportunity Employer.