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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 visible impact on millions of moviegoers with your technical skills.
- Qualifications: 5+ years in backend systems, deep Ruby/Rails expertise, MySQL tuning experience.
- Other info: Work closely with founders and enjoy a tight-knit team culture.
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.
- 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. 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 through platforms like LinkedIn. Engaging in conversations about their experiences can provide valuable insights into the company culture and expectations, which you can leverage during your interview.
✨Tip Number 4
Prepare specific examples of how you've implemented monitoring and alerting in previous roles. Being able to discuss your approach to maintaining data integrity and observability will highlight your fit for the responsibilities outlined in the job description.
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 relevant experience in backend systems, particularly with Ruby on Rails and MySQL. Emphasise any projects where you've optimised performance or scaled systems, as this aligns closely with what INDY is looking for.
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: In your cover letter, express your passion for data infrastructure and how your skills can contribute to INDY's mission. Mention specific experiences that demonstrate your ability to handle high-throughput systems and your familiarity with tools like Sidekiq and AWS.
Showcase Relevant Projects: If you have worked on any significant projects related to reporting engines or data pipelines, be sure to include these in your application. Detail your role, the technologies used, and the impact of your contributions.
Highlight Collaboration Skills: Since the role involves working with front-end engineers and other teams, mention any past experiences where you successfully collaborated across functions. This could include working with product teams or advising on data models.
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 databases, 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 tuning Sidekiq queues. Use examples from your past work to illustrate your problem-solving process.
✨Understand the Business Impact
INDY focuses on real-time business intelligence for cinemas. Familiarise yourself with how backend engineering can directly affect operational efficiency and customer experience. Be ready to discuss how your contributions can lead to visible impacts.
✨Prepare for Collaborative Scenarios
This role involves working closely with front-end engineers and other teams. Think of examples where you've successfully collaborated across functions, and be ready to discuss how you ensure APIs are ergonomic and secure for users.
