Backend Engineer

About Us
Maharishi Foundation International (MFI) is a US-registered non-profit that supports the development of new technologies and outreach opportunities for the worldwide Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) organisations. Over the past 60 years, more than 10 million people worldwide have learned the TM technique through personal instruction by tens of thousands of certified teachers. 
MFI is a growing, fully remote team of nearly 50 people, located around the globe but mainly in North America and Europe. As an organisation we are committed to leveraging modern technology and progressive management practices to make the TM technique and its related programmes more available to people everywhere. 
We favor a healthy and balanced work environment with opportunities for personal development.  
Job Summary
We are looking for a backend engineer with focus on AWS Infrastructure with a proven track record of developing backend services Serverless framework. As we are a small, but growing team you will be responsible for the maintenance and support of existing backend features as well as planning and scoping new feature additions and iterations.
You will be working closely with our product team (design, product and development) to launch a meditation and lifestyle application. Applicants should have a proven track record working on large scale, consumer facing products with experience creating modular service based solutions. Applicants should be comfortable working in a fast paced environment, where each individual has a lot of influence and responsibility to deliver, and key to this continuous integration is a reliable and scalable CI / CD process.  You will play an extremely vital role in the development and release of this application as well as maintaining and improving the CI tools we use moving forward. Since there is an existing global community waiting for this application, the app will have an immediate, engaged user base. 
The AWS backend is built using a serverless approach using AppSync (GraphQL), DynamoDB, Cognito and Lambda. Local development and stack deployment is managed using the Serverless framework, and CI pipelines have been implemented using CircleCI and Bitrise. You will become responsible for all of the working elements of the system and the accounts associated with the architecture.
About You
You understand how the AWS suite of products is structured, and can show experience writing fully tested scalable code using relevant AWS products and services. You understand API architecture, and can take a data model and translate it into reusable and flexible components. You enjoy shipping clean, readable and reusable code. You are comfortable working on a distributed team spread across time zones and cultures. You are excited to use technology to have a positive impact in the world as a whole, and in an intimate way for each individual.
Responsibilities
Work with design team during their sprints to develop the platform 
Ensure the performance, quality, and responsiveness of the application
Collaborate with the team and contribute to the definition of specifications for new features, and own the development of those features
Develop a detailed understanding of deployment processes for AWS (cloudformation) Bitrise, CircleCI and the destination APIs from Google Play and App Store Connect.
Proactively identify and correct bottlenecks, fix bugs and performance issues
Maintain code quality, organization and automatization
Develop a logging and monitoring strategy for all aspects of the infrastructure
Understand the concepts of DevSecOps and the tools we should implement to ensure Security best practices are followed
Ensure testing strategy is followed within the team - for unit and integration tests
Skills and Requirements 
Proven experience in mobile app development 
Proven track record working within an AWS application environment
An understanding of best practice DevOps process, and some experience writing CI pipelines and deployment scripts
Familiarity with Application logging and debugging platforms (Sentry, New Relic, Splunk)
Some knowledge of security testing tools and code quality assessment
Experience with large scale testing in a production environment
Familiarity with connecting mobile applications to back-end services through APIs
Familiarly with the API standards including GraphQL and REST 
Experience with performance and memory tuning with standard tools
Familiarity with cloud message APIs and push notifications
Proficient with code versioning tools (Git)
5 years of testing and deploying code in a large scale production environment
Experience working in a global non-profit, working with a remote team or in a multinational organization preferred
Fluency in English (written and verbal)
 
Bonus points if you have 
Experience with Node.js
Experience with data architecture
Experience with Netsuite or similar CRMs and lead nurturing would be a plus
Experience with the Transcendental Meditation® organisation, meditation, or some form of healthy living
If you are passionate about this work but do not have all of the skills listed we are still interested in hearing from you! 
Pay and benefits
Our pay levels are set according to a formula that combines above-median market rate data for the role (we pay 55th percentile of New York market rate for this role, based on Payscale data) adjusted for your local cost of living based on Numbeo data.
 
We take the issue of equitable pay very seriously, and we apply our pay formula to all workers who work 80% or more of full time hours with us.
Diversity and inclusion
We care about diversity - we strive to ensure all of our team feel included and can bring their whole selves to work but we also know that this work is never ‘done’ or complete, and that we can always improve.
Our team is fully remote, living and working across 20 countries across the world, and we’d love to hear how you can add to our special culture at MFI.