Backend Lead

1.About Vulcan Labs
Never settle. Think bigger.
Founded in Vietnam in 2017, Vulcan Labs builds and scales AI-powered consumer products for global markets. Our portfolio has passed 200M+ downloads, and our flagship product Chat Smith, an AI productivity app, has reached 65M+ users worldwide.
We are now moving from shipping AI features to running an agent-native engineering organization:
shared platforms, production-grade multi-agent systems, and eval-driven development across two product tracks, Chat Smith and a fast-growing Mobile App Portfolio.
2.Role Summary
We are looking for a Backend Lead to own backend engineering across all Vulcan Labs products. You will set the technical direction for our Go-based backend and AI infrastructure on GCP, lead and grow the backend team, and make sure product teams build on shared platforms instead of reinventing infrastructure. This is a hands-on leadership role: you design and review systems, unblock engineers, and still write code where it matters.
You report to the Head of Engineering and work directly with Product Owners, Design, Data, and the other Tech Leads (iOS, Android, FrontEnd, AI, QA/QC)
What will you do?
Technical leadership
Own the architecture and roadmap of backend systems serving Chat Smith (our flagship product), the Mobile App Portfolio.
Drive platform thinking: consolidate shared services (auth, billing/credits, LLM gateway, memory/context, observability) so teams ship faster with less duplication.
Design and scale LLM-backed services: model routing, streaming, caching, rate limiting, cost control, and safety guardrails across multiple providers (Vertex AI/Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic).
Build the eval and observability foundation (Langfuse or equivalent) so AI features move from demo quality to production quality with measurable regressions.
Set and enforce engineering standards: system design reviews, code review, testing, CI/CD, and incident response.
Own reliability, security, and cost of backend workloads on GCP, including IAM hygiene, secret
management, and keyless service architecture.
Team leadership
Hire, onboard, mentor, and grow backend engineers (10-12 members); run performance and career development for the team.
Set clear goals aligned with product outcomes (Revenue, Retention, Quality, User Experiences), not just delivery.
Work in a shared-backlog model with PO, Engineering, and Design; translate product bets into technical plans and trade-offs.
Build a culture of ownership, data-driven decisions, and honest technical debate aligned with Vulcan core values.
3.Who are we looking for?
8+ years in backend engineering, including 3+ years leading engineers (tech lead or engineering manager).
Expert in Golang; strong in system design, distributed systems, and API design at consumer scale (tens of millions of users).
Production experience with GCP (GKE/Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, IAM) or equivalent; solid CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code fundamentals.
Strong database skills across SQL and NoSQL: schema design, query optimization, and data modeling for high-traffic products.
Hands-on experience shipping LLM-powered features or agent systems to production, including cost, latency, and quality trade-offs.
Comfortable with workflow orchestration (Temporal or similar) and event-driven architectures.
Security mindset: threat modeling, least privilege, audit logging, and protection of user data.
Demonstrated ability to hire, coach, and retain strong engineers
Nice to have
Experience with subscription and credit-based monetization systems (IAP, billing reconciliation, fraud/abuse prevention).
Python experience for AI tooling and evaluation pipelines.
Background in mobile-first consumer products (Android/iOS backend integration, push, analytics).
4.Why do you love working here?
SALARY & BONUS: Competitive package with 13th-month salary, KPI-based bonuses, and hot rewards for each project.
REAL SCALE: Your systems serve tens of millions of users across top-chart apps globally.
AI AT THE CORE: Work on production multi-agent systems, LLM infrastructure, and eval pipelines, not side experiments.
OWNERSHIP: You set the technical direction for the whole backend and are trusted to make the calls.
CULTURE: Small, senior, cross-functional teams; flat structure; direct feedback.
OTHER BENEFITS: Company trips, team building, birthday and year-end parties.
Should you be interested in this position, kindly send your profile to email: [protected info] with the subject: [Position Title] - [Your Name]