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For Companies At a Glance
- Tasks: Join us to architect and scale our distributed reporting engine for movie theatres.
- Company: INDY powers operational layers of cinemas globally, handling millions of tickets yearly.
- Benefits: Enjoy remote work flexibility and a tight-knit team culture with direct impact.
- Why this job: Make a visible impact on millions while owning projects from start to finish.
- Qualifications: 5+ years in backend systems, deep Ruby/Rails expertise, and MySQL tuning experience required.
- Other info: Collaborate closely with founders and domain experts in a dynamic environment.
The predicted salary is between 48000 - 84000 £ per year.
Location: Remote (Global)
Team Size: ≈ 10 engineers
Core Stack: Ruby on Rails (API-only), Sidekiq, MySQL, AWS (EC2, RDS, EFS), Highcharts.js (data consumers)
About INDY
INDY powers every operational layer of a movie theater—from ticket sales and concessions to scheduling, accounting, and real-time business intelligence. Our platform handles tens of millions of tickets a year across cinemas worldwide, yet we remain a nimble team where each engineer’s work is felt immediately in theaters on six continents.
Why This Role Exists
Our home-grown reporting platform is the analytical backbone of INDY. It decomposes incoming queries into thousands of parallel Sidekiq jobs (hourly → daily → weekly → monthly roll-ups) and serves the results back to cinema managers in seconds. As volume soars, we need a backend-focused engineer to:
- Own and harden this distributed reporting engine.
- Design data pipelines that can ingest years of transactional data and still answer ad-hoc questions quickly.
- You will partner with—but not be accountable for—front-end engineers who wire these APIs into Vue-based dashboards.
What You’ll Do
- Architect & Scale
- Profile, partition, and optimize multi-terabyte MySQL schemas.
- Tune Sidekiq queues, worker pools, and EC2 autoscaling groups for bursty loads.
- Refactor long-running jobs into idempotent, parallelizable units.
- Maintain Data Integrity & Observability
- Implement validation, audit trails, and automated backfills.
- Instrument metrics/alerting around throughput, latency, and cost.
- Expand Administrative Workflows
- Expose clean GraphQL/REST contracts that power accounting tools for film bookings, revenue splits, and studio payouts.
- Introduce domain-specific abstractions (DSLs, helpers) so other engineers can add new report types rapidly.
- Collaborate Across Functions
- Work with infra engineers on Terraform-managed AWS resources.
- Pair with front-end devs to ensure APIs are ergonomic and secure.
- Advise product and finance teams on data-model trade-offs.
What We’re Looking For
- Must-Have
- 5+ yrs building high-throughput backend systems
- Deep Ruby/Rails & ActiveRecord expertise
- Hands-on MySQL tuning (indexes, partitioning, query plans)
- Proven record scaling background-job frameworks (Sidekiq, Resque, Celery, etc.)
- AWS production experience (EC2, RDS, IAM, VPC)
- Nice-to-Have
- Experience with BI/reporting engines or OLAP stores
- Exposure to ClickHouse/Redshift/BigQuery
- Event-driven or stream processing (Kafka, Kinesis)
- Familiarity with data-viz pipelines (we use Highcharts.js)
- Contributions to OSS or tech-blog posts on performance
What Success Looks Like (6-12 Months)
- Daily report-generation latency cut by 50 % while data volume doubles.
- Zero-downtime schema migrations and automated backfill strategy in place.
- First phase of studio-settlement APIs shipped and adopted by finance ops.
- Comprehensive dashboards/alerts proactively surface scaling limits before customers notice.
Why INDY Rocks
- Massive Visible Impact – Your optimizations ripple out to millions of moviegoers.
- Start-to-Finish Ownership – No layers of bureaucracy; ship, measure, iterate.
- Technically Spicy – Distributed computing meets real-world financial correctness.
- Tight-Knit Crew – Collaborate directly with founders and domain experts.
Senior Backend Engineer – Distributed Reporting & Data Infrastructure employer: INDY
Contact Detail:
INDY Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Backend Engineer – Distributed Reporting & Data Infrastructure
✨Tip Number 1
Familiarise yourself with the core technologies mentioned in the job description, especially Ruby on Rails and MySQL. Having hands-on experience with these technologies will not only boost your confidence but also help you engage in meaningful conversations during interviews.
✨Tip Number 2
Showcase your experience with distributed systems and backend engineering by preparing specific examples of past projects. Be ready to discuss how you optimised performance or scaled systems, as this role heavily focuses on those aspects.
✨Tip Number 3
Network with current or former employees of INDY through platforms like LinkedIn. Engaging with them can provide valuable insights into the company culture and expectations, which can be a great advantage during your interview.
✨Tip Number 4
Prepare to discuss your approach to data integrity and observability. Given the emphasis on maintaining data quality in this role, having a clear strategy or examples of how you've implemented these practices in previous roles will set you apart.
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Backend Engineer – Distributed Reporting & Data Infrastructure
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your CV: Make sure your CV highlights your experience with backend systems, particularly in Ruby on Rails and MySQL. Emphasise any relevant projects that showcase your ability to handle high-throughput systems and distributed reporting.
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: In your cover letter, explain why you're passionate about the role at INDY. Mention specific experiences that align with their needs, such as your work with Sidekiq or AWS, and how you can contribute to optimising their reporting platform.
Showcase Relevant Projects: If you have worked on similar projects, include links to your GitHub or portfolio. Highlight any contributions to open-source projects or tech blogs that demonstrate your expertise in backend engineering and data infrastructure.
Prepare for Technical Questions: Be ready to discuss your technical skills in detail. Prepare examples of how you've optimised database performance, managed data integrity, and collaborated with cross-functional teams. This will help you stand out during the interview process.
How to prepare for a job interview at INDY
✨Showcase Your Technical Expertise
Be prepared to discuss your experience with Ruby on Rails and MySQL in detail. Highlight specific projects where you've optimised backend systems or worked with high-throughput applications, as this role requires deep technical knowledge.
✨Demonstrate Problem-Solving Skills
Expect to face scenario-based questions that assess your ability to architect and scale systems. Think of examples where you've successfully tackled challenges related to data integrity, performance tuning, or distributed systems.
✨Understand the Business Impact
INDY values engineers who understand how their work affects the business. Be ready to explain how your contributions can lead to improved reporting efficiency and better decision-making for cinema managers.
✨Prepare for Collaboration Questions
Since this role involves working closely with front-end engineers and other teams, prepare to discuss your experience in cross-functional collaboration. Share examples of how you've effectively communicated technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
