About this role.
This is a senior individual-contributor platform engineering role focused on backend architecture, cloud infrastructure, developer experience, security foundations, and operational reliability. The engineer will independently identify, scope, and deliver ambiguous cross-functional initiatives, including database write scaling, CI/CD modernization, and a CloudFormation-to-Terraform migration. Strong distributed-systems expertise, AWS or transferable Azure experience, infrastructure-as-code skills, and production incident ownership are central to success. Although C#/.NET is preferred, Apaleo emphasizes transferable engineering fundamentals and technical leadership over a specific language background. The role is hybrid in Munich, with remote eligibility within Germany or elsewhere in Europe through an Employer of Record.
Role DNA
A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.
Job Complexity
5/5Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would first establish the workload profile, consistency requirements, contention points, and growth projections through metrics and query analysis. Depending on those findings, I would evaluate options such as data partitioning or sharding, write-path redesign, asynchronous processing, and selective denormalization, while defining clear migration, rollback, and operational plans.
I would inventory existing infrastructure, identify ownership and dependencies, and establish Terraform module, state-management, security, and review standards before migration. I would migrate incrementally by domain, validate plans against current resources, minimize drift, automate verification, and ensure every environment can be recreated reliably before retiring legacy definitions.
I begin by clarifying the business and technical outcome, gathering evidence on risks and constraints, and writing a lightweight proposal with milestones and measurable success criteria. I then align stakeholders, make trade-offs explicit, deliver in safe increments, and regularly communicate progress, decisions, and emerging risks.
I would define service-level indicators and objectives, standardize structured logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and actionable alerts, and make ownership visible. For incidents, I would use clear runbooks, incident roles, blameless postmortems, and a prioritized follow-up process that addresses both immediate reliability gaps and systemic causes.
I would start with a controlled pilot focused on measurable use cases such as test generation, code review support, documentation, and repetitive infrastructure tasks. I would establish security and data-handling guardrails, collect developer feedback and quality metrics, then provide training and adoption guidance only where the tools demonstrably improve delivery without weakening engineering standards.
Staff Backend Engineer – Platform
Join Apaleo and shape the future of hospitality tech
Apaleo is the world’s most open, API-first property management platform powering the next generation of hospitality operations. Its modular, AI-powered infrastructure lets hoteliers customise their tech stack, automate routine work and deliver seamless, personalised guest experiences, powered by best-in-class apps and autonomous AI agents that adapt to every stay.
If you’re driven by the idea of making hospitality smarter, more human and powered by cutting-edge technology, we’d love to hear from you.
About the role
You’ll join our Platform team as an individual contributor working closely with our Principal Engineer, who leads Platform’s technical direction. Platform owns infrastructure, developer experience and security foundations for the whole engineering org, so this is a high-ownership seat: you’ll take on large, ambiguous, cross-cutting initiatives and drive them from first analysis through to completion, with real autonomy over how you get there.
We don’t run a groomed backlog or sprint planning. We assign a big topic to someone who owns it end to end. If you thrive with structure handed to you, this isn’t the role; if you love spotting the problem worth solving and driving it yourself, you’ll fit right in.
What you’ll be up to
- Architecting and developing scalable, reliable and maintainable backend systems.
- Self-identifying and scoping problems and initiatives, not just executing assigned tickets: assessing impact, prioritisation and timing independently.
- Leading architectural decisions and design discussions with cross-team alignment.
- Driving large, ambiguous, cross-cutting initiatives end to end, including coordination with multiple stakeholders.
- Mentoring engineers and driving technical excellence.
- Building and maintaining internal tools and infrastructure (AWS, Terraform) that empower teams to deliver faster and more reliably.
- Owning observability, logging and operational excellence to keep the platform highly available.
- Participating in on-call rotations and stepping in as a reliable problem solver during incidents.
- Proactively spotting where AI and automation can drive technical improvement.
Some of the challenges waiting for you
- Solving horizontal write-scaling for our database (we already scale reads horizontally).
- Modernising our CI/CD pipeline for faster, more reliable delivery.
- Migrating our infrastructure-as-code fully from CloudFormation to Terraform, including the ability to recreate an Apaleo environment from scratch.
- Extracting and reworking common services (like shared schedulers) to get us ready for our next scale level.
What you’ll bring to the team
- 8+ years of backend development experience, including several years in a staff-level or technical leadership role.
- Strong engineering fundamentals that transfer across languages and cloud platforms: we care more about how you think than which stack you’ve used.
- A track record of owning large technical initiatives from ambiguity through to completion, ideally on a platform or infrastructure team rather than a pure product team.
- Experience designing and scaling distributed systems in cloud-native environments (AWS preferred; strong Azure fundamentals with genuine enthusiasm for the switch work just as well).
- Comfortable working with containerised services and infrastructure-as-code (Docker, Terraform; CloudFormation exposure is relevant given our current stack).
- Confidence writing your own unit and integration tests: we don’t have a dedicated QA function.
- Fluent English.
Nice to have
- Direct experience with C# (.NET), PostgreSQL, AWS and ECS/Kubernetes: a great fit, though not a hard requirement if your fundamentals are strong.
- Experience setting up infrastructure-as-code from scratch and working with it day to day, ideally with Terraform, including migrating or consolidating from other IaC approaches (like CloudFormation).
- Experience with Kafka or other event-driven and streaming systems (Azure Service Bus experience is a good transferable equivalent).
- Hands-on use of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor AI, ChatGPT, Amazon CodeWhisperer) and a genuine interest in AI-driven engineering improvement.
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills, particularly for introducing new technology, like AI tooling, to other teams.
What we offer
Culture and growth
- A diverse and international team: work alongside passionate professionals from over 20 nationalities.
- Growth and development: 360° feedback reviews, a dedicated learning budget and an evolving career framework.
- Autonomy and ownership: we empower you to take responsibility, make decisions and contribute directly in an environment built on trust and transparency.
- Shape the future of hospitality tech: your work drives real impact from day one, at a fast-growing scale-up.
- Competitive and fair compensation, guided by benchmarking data to ensure fairness across all roles and teams.
Perks and lifestyle
- Flexible and remote work options: office, home or hybrid, based on what works for your role and team.
- A fully covered Deutschland Ticket for free public transport across Germany.
- Regular team dinners, company meetups, Oktoberfest celebrations, Christmas parties and other offsite events.
- 30 days of paid holiday to fully disconnect, recharge and return inspired.
- An EGYM Wellpass membership giving access to hundreds of gyms, fitness studios and wellness options.
Where you’ll work from
This role is based in Munich, with hybrid working from our office there. We’re also open to remote within Germany, or remote via an Employer of Record for candidates based outside in the EU/ Europe.
We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive and welcoming workplace. We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, regardless of race, colour, religion, gender identity or expression, sex, national origin, age, marital status, disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Your personal data will be handled with the utmost care and in compliance with GDPR and relevant data protection regulations. We celebrate differences and believe that diversity enriches our team and drives innovation.
Annual salary information is not provided for this position. Explore salary ranges for similar roles in our Salary Directory ›
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