Backend Engineer (Django + AWS/Docker)

About SmallWorld

SmallWorld is a next-generation social media platform designed to connect people, build communities, and create meaningful conversations. We are on a mission to become one of Africa's leading social platforms and expand globally through continuous innovation and exceptional user experiences.

If you're passionate about building products that millions of people love to use, we'd love to hear from you.

What You'll Be Working On

• Building and maintaining the SmallWorld backend — a Django/DRF ASGI application handling social features, creator tools, rewards, identity verification, and real-time chat via Django Channels
• Designing and shipping APIs consumed by iOS, Android, and web clients
• Managing our infrastructure on AWS - EC2, ECR, RDS (PostgreSQL), ElastiCache (Redis), S3, CloudFront
• Running and improving our Celery task queue and beat scheduler - scheduled posts, notifications, Champions Reward draws, KPI reporting
• Writing CI/CD pipelines and maintaining deployment reliability (GitHub Actions)
• Debugging production incidents and owning the fix through to deployment
• Reviewing code from teammates and contributing to architectural decisions

Stack

• Backend: Python 3.10, Django 4.2, Django REST Framework, Django Channels 4
• Database: PostgreSQL (AWS RDS), Redis (ElastiCache)
• Task queue: Celery + Celery Beat
• Infrastructure: AWS EC2, ECR, S3, CloudFront
• Containers: Docker, Docker Compose
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions
• Notifications: Firebase FCM, Postmark
• Monitoring: Sentry
• NLP: spaCy (for content vector/feed ranking)

What We're Looking For

Must have:

• 2–5 years of professional backend experience
• Strong Python and Django - you've shipped production Django apps, not just tutorials
• Real AWS experience - you know how EC2, RDS, S3, and ECR actually work, not just what the docs say
• Comfortable with Docker and Docker Compose in a production environment
• Experience with Celery or equivalent task queue systems
• PostgreSQL - you can write a proper query, understand indexes, and know when an ORM query is doing something dumb
• Git discipline - clean commits, meaningful PRs, code reviews that actually catch things
• Able to debug a production incident without panicking

Nice to have:

• Experience with Django Channels / WebSockets
• Familiarity with ASGI and async Django
• Firebase FCM or similar push notification systems
• GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline experience
• Basic security instincts — you know what PII is and why it matters

What Good Looks Like Here

We don't measure you by hours. We measure you by:

• PRs that pass review on the first or second round - not because you played it safe, but because you read the codebase before writing code
• Fixes that actually fix things - root cause, not band aid
• Ownership - if you shipped it, you care about whether it's working
• Communication - you flag blockers early, you ask the right questions, you don't go dark

Why Join Us?

• Build products used by potentially millions of people.
• Influence the direction of an ambitious social media platform.
• Work with a passionate and growing team.
• Have the freedom to innovate and bring ideas to life.
• Competitive salary and performance-based rewards.

· Remote-friendly - we care about output, not location.

Salary

• ₦70,000–₦200,000/month depends on your experience
• Performance bonus based on KPIs
• Salary review after 6 months based on performance

Experience SmallWorld Before Applying

We encourage all applicants to download and explore SmallWorld before submitting their application. This will help you better understand our product and enable you to provide more relevant and insightful recommendations during the selection process.

Download SmallWorld

📱 Apple App Store

https://apps.apple.com/ng/app/smallworld-social-platform/id6759069468

📱 Google Play Store

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smallworlddev.smallworld&pli=1