Junior Backend Engineer (AI-FIRST)

About Nexlab
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Nexlab Technology is a software company of around 30 people based in Ho Chi Minh City, building products for enterprise clients across healthcare, education, manufacturing, tourism, and commerce. What sets us apart is that we run our entire software development process on AI - and we're looking for early-career engineers ready to work the new way from day one.
‍ 2. About the Role ‍ As a Junior Backend Engineer, you'll own the server-side of one or two enterprise client projects - from reading specifications and building APIs to integrating systems, shipping to production, and keeping things running.
What makes this different from a traditional backend role: most of the code is generated by an AI coding agent under your direction. Your core job is to frame the right problem for the AI and verify its output
- not simply to type code line by line.This role is designed for people early in their careers, but we evaluate you on the quality of your output , not on years of experience.
‍3. Key Responsibilities
Operating the AI coding agent on your assigned backend scope
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Translate specifications into well-constrained tasks for the AI coding agent: data models, API contracts, business rules, error handling, and security constraints.
Prepare and maintain the working context for the agent on your assigned repo (project conventions, standard code patterns, permitted scope).
Break large problems into steps the agent can execute effectively.
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Verifying output - the most important part of the role
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Review every change before it enters a pull request: correct business logic, correct data constraints, no permission leaks, no security holes, no hidden technical debt.
Catch the subtle issues that "working code" often hides: N+1 queries, missing transactions, race conditions, poor error handling, authorization checked at the wrong layer, sensitive data leaking into logs.
Write and maintain tests for the areas you own, including the business cases the agent won't think of on its own.
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Owning the lifecycle of your scope
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Design and optimize database schemas, and write safe migrations for live data.
Integrate third-party systems (payment gateways, identity services, client internal systems, large language models) with proper retry, idempotency, and rate limiting.
Ship to staging via CI/CD, take part in the production release process (under the Technical Lead's approval), monitor logs and alerts, and help resolve incidents.
Write concise root cause analyses (RCA) when issues arise and propose ways to prevent recurrence.
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Contributing back to how the team works
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Package effective prompting approaches, rules, and verification patterns into shared assets for the team.
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Reports to:
Project Technical Lead
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4. Requirements
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Under 2 years of backend experience, or no professional experience but at least one product you've personally shipped to a real environment (with a repo/demo to discuss).
Strong programming foundation in a statically typed language(C#, Java, Go, TypeScript, or equivalent). We don't require prior .NET experience, but you should have taught yourself a new technology and applied it competently in real work.
Working proficiency with relational databases:designing tables, writing queries with joins, and understanding indexes and transactions.
A solid grasp of HTTP and REST- enough to design a clean API on your own (methods, status codes, pagination, authentication, and authorization).
AI applied in your daily work:you use an AI coding agent or AI IDE (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or equivalent) for real work. This is a working requirement at Nexlab, not a bonus.
A verification mindset for AI output: you can share a specific instance where you caught AI-generated code that "ran correctly but was fundamentally wrong."
Data security awareness:you understand and follow each project's data-handling rules.
Fluent reading comprehension of technical documentation in English.
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Initiative and a willingness to learn:you ask questions early when stuck and take ownership of the quality of your work.
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5. Nice to Have
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Hands-on .NET C# / .NET Core experience on real projects.
Experience with Enterprise CMS (Sitecore, Umbraco, CrafterCMS) or headless architecture.
Cloud deployment experience (Azure, AWS, GCP) and building CI/CD pipelines.
Familiarity with Docker, message queues, or caching.
Experience integrating large language models into products (RAG, function calling, processing pipelines).
Having built your own prompt pipelines, skills, or AI workflows for your work.
Good spoken English (some projects work directly with international clients).
Open-source contributions or public technical writing.
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Benefits
‍- Competitive Salary Based On Qualifications And Experience.
Social insurance and statutory benefits in accordance with Vietnamese labor regulations.
Opportunity to work on digital transformation projects within the healthcare sector.
Professional, innovative, and collaborative working environment.
Career development opportunities in healthcare technology and business analysis.
Team-building activities, company events, and annual celebrations.
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Location:
210 Hoang Hoa Tham, Bay Hien Ward, HCM City (with periods working at client offices depending on the project)
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Hours:
Monday - Friday ([protected info])