How To Apply – Wonderfil

Senior Backend/Cloud Engineer Full Time Employment | Hybrid in Santa Cruz, CA

About Wonderfil

Wonderfil builds smart refill stations that eliminate single-use plastics. Our IoT-powered machines dispense shampoo, detergent, and other household essentials across major retailers and universities. We’re scaling rapidly and looking for a Senior Backend / Cloud Engineer to design and build the foundation of our server-side systems — from infrastructure to APIs — powering the next generation of our connected refill ecosystem.

Role Overview

This is a foundational role. You’ll architect and implement Wonderfil’s cloud and backend platform from the ground up — spanning infrastructure, APIs, and data systems. You’ll collaborate closely with the software and hardware teams, but this will be your domain to shape: defining standards, selecting the right tools and services, and building a backend that’s secure, scalable, and easy to grow on. You’ll also be hands-on, writing clean, maintainable, and well-tested code that sets the standard for how we build.

Compensation
Wonderfil is a rapidly growing, venture-backed climate-tech startup, and we’re looking for someone who’s excited to grow with us over the long term. Our compensation package includes a competitive salary, generous stock options, and a full suite of benefits designed to support both your work and life.

Salary: $140,000+ DOE, plus equity options in a high-growth public benefit corporation
Benefits: Health insurance, unlimited PTO, paid holidays, and flexible work arrangements

You’ll have the opportunity to take ownership of core backend systems powering a national refill network—your work will directly shape the infrastructure eliminating single-use plastics across campuses and retailers nationwide.

What You’ll Do

Platform & Infrastructure

• Evaluate our current platform and design a scalable, maintainable cloud architecture balancing performance, cost, and growth.

• Choose and configure the right mix of services (e.g., ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, S3, CloudFront, IAM, or equivalents) based on best fit — not preset tooling.

• Implement Infrastructure as Code (e.g., CDK, Terraform, or Pulumi) to ensure consistent, reproducible environments.

• Oversee domain and certificate management (Route 53, SSL/TLS) as part of infrastructure ownership.

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, deployments, and safe rollbacks.

Database & Data Management

• Design and maintain a relational database schema (PostgreSQL) as the system of record.

• Migrate existing NoSQL data (DynamoDB) where appropriate into the new schema.

• Implement secure backups, replication, migrations, and retention policies.

• Collaborate with the software team to model data entities that align with IoT devices, customers, and transactions.

Backend & APIs

• Design and implement secure, high-performance REST or GraphQL APIs powering IoT machines, mobile apps, and internal tools.

• Develop backend services for payments, subscriptions, credit balances, and receipts (integrating with providers like Stripe).

• Support internal tools for device configuration, asset management, and reporting — owning the backend and data layer; front-end development handled collaboratively.

• Integrate with third-party APIs (ERPs, CRMs, analytics, payments, etc.).

• Implement authentication and authorization (OAuth2, Cognito, JWT, or mutual TLS).

DevOps & Observability

• Establish monitoring, logging, and alerting pipelines using tools such as CloudWatch, Grafana, or Datadog.

• Implement telemetry and anomaly detection for proactive issue resolution.

• Integrate auditing and compliance monitoring for transparency and reliability.

• Set up deployment strategies that enable zero-downtime releases and automated rollbacks.

Security & Compliance

• Implement security best practices aligned with standards such as PCI DSS, GDPR/CCPA, and SOC 2.

• Manage key rotation, secrets, IAM policies, and encryption in transit and at rest.

• Build systems that meet security and privacy expectations without personally managing audits or legal compliance.

• Align architecture with frameworks like AWS Well-Architected or NIST for long-term security posture.

Data & Analytics Enablement

• Build data pipelines for aggregating telemetry and usage data to support future analytics and forecasting.

• Collaborate with data or product teams to enable insights and predictive capabilities — not required to design ML models directly.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Own the backend and cloud domain — set technical direction, document decisions, and mentor others as the team grows.

• Work closely with the software and hardware teams to ensure seamless IoT-to-cloud integration.

• Provide input on future backend and DevOps hiring needs as the platform scales.

• Communicate progress, trade-offs, and priorities directly to leadership.

Required Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of experience building and maintaining production backend systems.

• Proficiency in one or more modern backend languages such as Python, Go, TypeScript (Node.js), or Java — and the ability to choose and justify the right tool for each problem.

• Strong understanding of cloud platforms, preferably AWS (experience with ECS, Lambda, RDS, API Gateway, S3, or equivalents).

• Deep experience with PostgreSQL and relational database design.

• Proven experience with Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and cloud networking.

• Familiarity with IoT protocols (MQTT, device shadows, telemetry ingestion).

• Working knowledge of DNS, SSL/TLS, and domain management.

• Comfortable operating autonomously, balancing pragmatism with scalability.

• Interest in sustainability and technology that reduces waste.

Preferred/Nice to Have

• Experience with data pipelines, analytics, or machine learning.

• Background in IoT hardware integration or edge computing.

• Some front-end experience for internal tools.

How to Apply

Email your resume and cover letter to brian@wonderfil.world