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- Tasks: Join a dynamic team to optimise backend systems for a global movie theatre platform.
- Company: INDY powers cinema operations worldwide, handling millions of tickets annually with a nimble engineering team.
- Benefits: Enjoy remote work flexibility and the chance to make a visible impact on millions of moviegoers.
- Why this job: Be part of a tight-knit crew where your work directly influences cinema experiences across six continents.
- Qualifications: 5+ years in backend systems, deep Ruby/Rails expertise, and hands-on MySQL tuning experience required.
- Other info: Contribute to OSS or tech blogs and collaborate closely with founders and domain experts.
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. Consider building a small project or contributing to an open-source project that uses these technologies to demonstrate your hands-on experience.
✨Tip Number 2
Network with current or former employees of INDY through platforms like LinkedIn. Engaging in conversations about their experiences can provide you with valuable insights into the company culture and expectations for the role.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare to discuss specific examples of how you've optimised backend systems in the past. Be ready to explain your thought process and the impact of your work, as this will showcase your problem-solving skills and technical expertise.
✨Tip Number 4
Stay updated on the latest trends in distributed systems and data infrastructure. Being knowledgeable about new tools and methodologies can help you stand out during discussions and show your commitment to continuous learning.
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 data pipelines.
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: In your cover letter, explain why you're passionate about the role at INDY. Mention specific aspects of their reporting platform and how your skills align with their needs, such as your experience with Sidekiq or AWS.
Showcase Relevant Projects: If you have worked on similar projects, describe them in detail. Highlight your contributions, the technologies used, and the impact of your work, especially in terms of performance improvements or scaling solutions.
Prepare for Technical Questions: Be ready to discuss your technical expertise in depth. Prepare examples of how you've optimised databases, managed queues, or implemented data integrity measures in past roles, as these are crucial for the position.
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 Sidekiq in detail. Highlight specific projects where you've optimised backend systems or handled high-throughput data processing.
✨Demonstrate Problem-Solving Skills
Expect to face technical challenges during the interview. Practice explaining your thought process for solving complex problems, especially those related to data integrity and performance tuning.
✨Understand the Company’s Product
Familiarise yourself with INDY's platform and how it impacts movie theatres globally. Being able to articulate how your role as a Senior Backend Engineer contributes to their mission will impress the interviewers.
✨Prepare for Collaboration Questions
Since this role involves working closely with front-end engineers and other teams, be ready to discuss your experience in cross-functional collaboration. Share examples of how you’ve successfully partnered with others to achieve project goals.
