Principal Backend & Infrastructure Engineer-Full Time (US /LATAM)

Introduction:

Very Good Ventures is a global consultancy that delivers clients elegant solutions using disruptive technologies. At VGV, we believe that building very good technology starts with a culture of excellence, collaboration, humility, and openness – and of course, have a very good time while doing it. We place our company values and culture at the forefront of everything we do.

Rising to prominence as the foremost Flutter experts, VGV is at an exciting stage of growth as we expand our global presence and our range of strategic services. Our mission is to lead the most influential companies through new digital frontiers and improve the relationship between technology and those that create, manage, and experience it. VGV’s client roster spans industries, including Toyota, Google, Dow Jones, JSX, Betterment, and Norwegian Cruise Lines.

People come to work at VGV to solve challenging problems with the newest technology, alongside some of the best talent in the industry, and in a culture that remains steadfastly dedicated to its employees.

Overview

Very Good Ventures is a product consultancy. Our engagements span different clients, stacks, and constraints, and they change fast. Our product development focus leans heavily toward cloud infrastructure and, more recently, toward building and deploying AI agents and agentic infrastructure for our clients. We need someone who can ramp up quickly on new projects and stacks, stay credible while doing it, and carry a project from a first sales conversation through to a running production system.

This is a consulting role that demands deep engineering, not an engineering role that happens to sit inside a consultancy. You will define and lead our backend, infrastructure, and agentic-infrastructure practice, represent that expertise in front of clients and prospects, and ship the work yourself.

If you want a heads-down platform role at a single product company, this is not it. If you want to shape a practice, earn client trust, be exposed to multiple projects and companies, and still write the code that matters, this role is then what you’re looking for.

What you’ll do

Client leadership and practice definition

• Act as the credible technical voice in pre-sales and client conversations. Help scope engagements, shape technical direction, and set expectations that we can deliver against.
• Partner with business development and leadership to estimate work, phase delivery, and protect both margin and delivery risk on fixed budgets and immovable dates.
• Define and evolve VGV’s backend, infrastructure, and agentic-infrastructure practice. Set the standards, patterns, and reusable approaches that the rest of the team builds on.
• Translate technical decisions for non-technical stakeholders. Anchor on business outcomes and risk, and command the room without drowning people in jargon.
• Deliver quality across simultaneous engagements with different requirements and constraints, and ramp fast on stacks you have not touched before.

AI Agents and Agentic Infrastructure

• Design, build, deploy and scale production AI agents and the infrastructure that runs them. This is core to the role.
• Establish patterns for observability, cost control, safety, and reliability specific to agentic systems.

Platform and infrastructure

• Design, implement, and manage cloud infrastructure with infrastructure -as-code tooling such as Terraform or OpenTofu.
• Build staged development environments and the CI/CD pipelines that make deployments rapid, reliable, and automated.
• Own observability, monitoring, logging, and alerting for performance, usage, and security.
• Set best practices for security, compliance, and cost optimization across cloud deployments.

Backend and development integration

• Build, deploy, and scale backend (micro)services with a focus on high-availability and resilience.
• Design and maintain backend APIs and integration services. Strong API design judgement across REST, GraphQL, and gRPC.
• Apply backend architectural patterns appropriately and explain the trade-offs behind your choices.
• Collaborate with front-end teams on integrations and performance.

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years as a Backend or Full Stack Engineer, with a strong emphasis on DevOPps, programmatic infrastructure, or Site Reliability Engineering.
• Demonstrated experience building and scaling production AI-powered services or agents. Prototypes are not enough. We want to hear about systems that ran in production.
• Deep expertise in infrastructure-as-code and cloud resource management. We care about the principles you carry between the tools, not a specific tool or vendor.
• Strong experience with at least one major cloud platform, such as GCP, AWS, or Azure.
• A track record of designing and scaling production backends, building custom services, and using cloud managed services well.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with feature-flagging and staged rollouts.
• Experience implementing and running observability, logging, and alerting.
• Comfortable in fast-paced environments with evolving requirements.

Consulting and communication

• Comfortable operating in a client-facing consultancy environment. You have represented an engineering practice to external stakeholders before, whether a consultancy, an agency, or in a forward-deployed or solutions-architect capacity.
• You can establish a standard or practice at the organization level and drive its adoption, not just execute inside someone else’s system.
• Confident, fluent written and spoken English. This role requires holding a room and translating for non-technical executives, so the bar is higher than conversational fluency.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship now or in the future.

Nice to have

• Certification from one or more cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure.
• Anthropic or other AI certification such as a Claude Certified Architect Foundations.
• Public technical credibility through talks, writing, teaching, or open-source leadership.
• Experience at a consultancy or agency

***Total Rewards For US Based Candidates***

VGV wants all employees to be supported in their personal and professional development, so we take a comprehensive approach to compensation and benefits. The initial annual base salary for this position is expected to range from $198k-$230k based on experience and location. We benchmark every role based on location and against comparable companies to ensure competitiveness; however, actual compensation is highly dependent on numerous factors such as location, experience, knowledge and skills, qualifications and other job-related factors.

Benefits

• Passion and enthusiasm for what we create.
• REMOTE first and global company.
• Subsidized health insurance, dental, and vision coverage
• Generous parental leave.
• Flexible PTO and company holidays.
• End of year company shut down (December 25 - January 1), in addition to observing company holidays.
• 12 -16 weeks universal fully paid family leave.
• Other benefits available based on location.

***Total Rewards For Non-US Based Candidates***

VGV wants all employees to be supported in their personal and professional development, so we take a comprehensive approach to compensation and benefits. We benchmark every role based on location and against comparable companies to ensure competitiveness; however, actual compensation is highly dependent on numerous factors such as location, experience, knowledge and skills, qualifications and other job-related factors.

Benefits

• Passion and enthusiasm for what we create.
• REMOTE first and global company.
• Subsidized health coverage.
• Generous parental leave.
• Paid Time Off
• End of year company shut down (December 25 - January 1), in addition to observing country holidays.
• Other benefits available based on location.

Company Values

• Raise the Bar
• Grow with Grit
• Build Momentum
• Collaborate with Candor
• Enjoy the Ride

Very Good Ventures is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds. We are committed to providing a fair and inclusive work environment, free from discrimination and harassment, and promoting diversity in our workforce. We value and celebrate the unique perspectives and contributions of each member of our global workforce, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other legally protected characteristic. We believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce is essential to our success as a company.