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For Companies At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and optimise backend systems for a high-throughput reporting platform.
- Company: INDY powers cinema operations globally, handling millions of tickets annually.
- Benefits: Enjoy remote work flexibility and a collaborative team environment.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on moviegoers while owning your projects from start to finish.
- Qualifications: 5+ years in backend systems with expertise in Ruby/Rails and MySQL.
- Other info: Join a tight-knit team and collaborate directly with founders.
The predicted salary is between 48000 - 72000 £ 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.
- Implement validation, audit trails, and automated backfills.
- Instrument metrics/alerting around throughput, latency, and cost.
- 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.
- 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 or projects that showcase your skills in these areas will help you stand out during discussions.
✨Tip Number 2
Prepare to discuss your experience with high-throughput backend systems and any specific challenges you've faced. Be ready to share examples of how you've optimised performance or scaled systems in previous roles.
✨Tip Number 3
Showcase your understanding of distributed systems and data pipelines. Think about how you would approach designing a reporting engine and be prepared to discuss your thought process during the interview.
✨Tip Number 4
Engage with the INDY community or similar tech forums to gain insights into their culture and values. This will not only help you tailor your conversations but also demonstrate your genuine interest in the company.
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, express your passion for backend engineering and how your skills align with INDY's mission. Mention specific experiences that demonstrate your expertise in optimising data pipelines and working with AWS.
Showcase Relevant Projects: If you have worked on similar projects, include links or descriptions of these in your application. Highlight any contributions to open-source projects or tech blogs that relate to performance and backend engineering.
Prepare for Technical Questions: Be ready to discuss your technical skills in detail. Prepare examples of how you've scaled background-job frameworks or optimised database schemas, as these are crucial for the role at INDY.
How to prepare for a job interview at INDY
✨Showcase Your Technical Expertise
Be prepared to discuss your experience with Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and AWS in detail. Highlight specific projects where you've optimised backend systems or scaled applications, as this role requires a deep understanding of these technologies.
✨Demonstrate Problem-Solving Skills
Expect to face technical challenges during the interview. Prepare to explain how you would approach scaling a distributed reporting engine or optimising Sidekiq queues. Use examples from your past work to illustrate your thought process.
✨Understand the Business Impact
INDY's platform has a direct impact on cinema operations. Familiarise yourself with how backend engineering contributes to business intelligence and operational efficiency. Be ready to discuss how your work can enhance user experience for cinema managers.
✨Prepare for Collaboration Questions
This role involves working closely with front-end engineers and other teams. Think about your past experiences collaborating across functions and be ready to share how you ensure effective communication and teamwork in a technical environment.
