Senior Backend Developer

EPAM is a leading global provider of digital platform engineering and development services. We are committed to having a positive impact on our customers, our employees, and our communities. We embrace a dynamic and inclusive culture. Here you will collaborate with multi-national teams, contribute to a myriad of innovative projects that deliver the most creative and cutting-edge solutions, and have an opportunity to continuously learn and grow. No matter where you are located, you will join a dedicated, creative, and diverse community that will help you discover your fullest potential.

We are seeking a Senior Backend Developer to join our AI Pods team and build reliable AI-powered API services together with agentic workflows. The role focuses on enabling language models to connect with internal systems, vector databases and external tools via orchestration frameworks. You will treat LLMs as building blocks within a secure, scalable distributed environment, taking full ownership of API contracts and service reliability while embedding LLMs through disciplined systems engineering practices spanning evaluation, observability, fallback handling and cost awareness.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement backend API services together with LLM orchestration layers
• Construct and maintain advanced RAG pipelines covering document ingestion, chunking, embedding and retrieval tuning
• Develop and integrate agent tools using LangChain, LangGraph and potentially MCP (Model Context Protocol)
• Enforce security, privacy, enterprise-grade observability and test coverage across all backend workflows
• Drive architecture decisions and engineering standards within the pod
• Collaborate with frontend engineers, data engineers and infrastructure teams
• Own API contracts and service reliability, ensuring graceful failure of AI edge cases
• Provide stable, reusable orchestration frameworks and logic intended for downstream developer use

Requirements

• 3+ years of backend engineering experience centered on microservices and distributed systems
• 2+ years of Python applied to high-performance backend services and cloud-native APIs
• Expertise in AWS, Docker and ECS/EKS
• Background in RESTful API design and development
• Knowledge of secure coding practices and solid auth/authz fundamentals
• Upper-Intermediate English language proficiency (B2)

Nice to have

• 1–2+ years of hands-on production work with AI SDKs such as OpenAI, Anthropic/Claude or AWS Bedrock
• Exposure to vector stores (Amazon Kendra, OpenSearch) along with embedding strategies and retrieval systems
• Practical experience building solutions on agentic frameworks like LlamaIndex
• Hands-on use of AI evaluation tooling or real-time APM platforms (LangSmith, Langfuse, Arize)
• 1–2+ years delivering React and TypeScript work, paired with large-scale EKS deployments
• Insight into agent interoperability patterns (MCP), identity/security domains (IAM, CIAM) plus additional languages such as Java, Node.js or Go

We offer

• International projects with top brands
• Work with global teams of highly skilled, diverse peers
• Healthcare benefits
• Employee financial programs
• Paid time off and sick leave
• Upskilling, reskilling and certification courses
• Unlimited access to the LinkedIn Learning library and 22,000+ courses
• Global career opportunities
• Volunteer and community involvement opportunities
• EPAM Employee Groups
• Award-winning culture recognized by Glassdoor, Newsweek and LinkedIn