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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 - 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.
- 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
Showcase your understanding of distributed systems and data pipelines. Prepare to discuss any relevant projects where you've optimised backend performance or handled large datasets, as this will resonate well with the team at INDY.
✨Tip Number 3
Network with current or former employees of INDY on platforms like LinkedIn. Engaging with them can provide insights into the company culture and expectations, which can be invaluable during interviews.
✨Tip Number 4
Prepare specific examples of how you've improved system performance or data integrity in past roles. Being able to articulate your contributions clearly will help you stand out as a candidate who can make an immediate impact.
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 aspects of their platform and how your skills align with their needs, especially around data pipelines and backend architecture.
Showcase Relevant Experience: When detailing your work history, focus on your achievements related to scaling backend systems and optimising performance. Use metrics to demonstrate your impact, such as improvements in report generation latency or successful migrations.
Prepare for Technical Questions: Be ready to discuss your technical expertise in depth. Prepare examples of how you've tackled challenges in backend engineering, particularly with tools like Sidekiq and AWS. 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 scalable solutions. Think about how you would approach challenges like optimising Sidekiq queues or designing data pipelines, and be ready to explain your thought process.
✨Emphasise Collaboration
This role involves working closely with front-end engineers and other teams. Share examples of past collaborations, focusing on how you ensured smooth communication and effective integration between backend and frontend systems.
✨Prepare Questions About the Company and Role
Show your interest in INDY by preparing insightful questions about their reporting platform and future projects. This not only demonstrates your enthusiasm but also helps you gauge if the company aligns with your career goals.
