Backend Developer (Contractor/Full-Time)

Location: Fully Remote

Engagement: Weekly retainer (full-time ownership expected, ~40 hrs/week)

Term: Initial 30-day engagement (option to extend or convert)

Compensation: $3,000/week (≈ $12,000/month)

Zom AI is building the next generation of intelligence for financial advisors and wealth teams, helping streamline client research, unlock AI-guided market insights, and connect portfolios with a verified community.

The platform is designed with production-grade workflows in mind, including secure, audited connections to the Zom AI API, support for custodial/advisor code onboarding (including BridgeFT sync), and customer-ready operational standards such as seat-based licensing and SOC 2 Type II posture.

Zom is hiring a Backend Developer (Contractor, Full-Time) to build, stabilize, and scale the backend as the product transitions from MVP to production-ready for real customers.

This is an execution-heavy, ownership-first role. You will own backend delivery across APIs, services, integrations, data models, and system reliability, working closely with the COO and the Senior AI Engineer to translate product requirements and AI workflows into robust backend implementations.

This is not a task-based contract. This role is accountable for delivering outcomes: reliability, speed, and backend readiness for paying customers.

• Own backend engineering end-to-end: design, implement, test, ship, and maintain backend services that power the platform.
• Build and harden APIs that support product functionality and AI-driven workflows (clear contracts, consistent errors, versioning where needed).
• Design and maintain data models and persistence layers (schemas, migrations, performance, integrity, and access patterns).
• Implement and stabilize integrations (including auth flows, webhooks, retries, idempotency, and monitoring).
• Drive production readiness and reliability:
• Improve observability (logging, metrics, tracing, where applicable)
• Set up alerting and error reporting
• Strengthen failure handling and resilience patterns
• Own performance and security basics: authentication/authorization, rate limiting as needed, secrets management practices, input validation, and secure integration handling.
• Debug and resolve incidents quickly with root-cause fixes (not just patches), and improve system stability over time.
• Collaborate with leadership and engineering for execution visibility:
• Partner with the COO on priorities, timelines, and delivery expectations
• Work closely with the Senior AI Engineer to support AI workflows with dependable backend endpoints
• Provide clear progress updates, surface blockers early, and flag technical risks proactively
• Write maintainable, well-documented code and continuously improve backend architecture as the product matures.
• Build with compliance in mind. All code and infrastructure built will need to remain compliant. We use automated software to check that we remain compliant.

• Proven experience building and owning production backend systems (APIs, services, databases, integrations).
• Strong backend fundamentals: API design, data modeling, service architecture, and debugging.
• Experience delivering reliable third-party integrations (webhooks, external APIs, auth, retries, idempotency).
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving startup environment with high autonomy and accountability.
• Practical experience with production hardening: monitoring/logging, error handling, incident response, and reliability improvements.
• Strong communication skills, able to provide visibility, align with stakeholders, and proactively flag risks.

• Experience supporting AI-enabled product workflows (async jobs, queues, event-driven systems, model-facing endpoints).
• Familiarity with scaling patterns (caching, background processing, rate limiting, load/perf testing).
• Experience working in environments with stronger compliance/security expectations (e.g., SOC 2-minded practices).

• Fully remote with a strong expectation of daily Slack presence and consistent overlap with the team for execution speed.
• High ownership: you’re expected to independently drive backend delivery with minimal hand-holding.

By day 30, you’ve helped deliver a backend that is ready to support real paying customers:

• Core backend services are stable, performant, and secure.
• APIs are reliable, documented, and actively used by the platform.
• Key integrations work end-to-end with monitoring and solid failure handling.
• Backend risks and bottlenecks are identified early and addressed proactively.
• The COO has clear visibility into backend progress, system health, and delivery risks.