Backend Engineer – Integrations and Distributed Systems

At Toku, we create bespoke cloud communications and customer engagement solutions to reimagine customer experiences for enterprises. We provide an end-to-end approach to help businesses overcome the complexity of digital transformation and deliver mission-critical CX through cloud communication solutions. Toku combines local strategic consulting expertise, bespoke technology, regional in-country infrastructure, connectivity, and global reach to serve the diverse needs of enterprises operating at scale. Headquartered in Singapore, Toku supports customers across APAC and beyond, with a growing footprint across global markets.

As a Backend Engineer at Toku, you will play a senior backend-first role designing, building, and operating the backend services that power Toku’s omnichannel communications platform. This role sits within a fast-moving engineering squad responsible for integration-heavy backend systems and high-volume communication workflows across messaging, notifications, and voice services.

You will work primarily in Go, contributing to scalable event-driven systems, backend integrations, distributed services, and production-critical communication infrastructure. This role prioritises backend depth, system design capability, distributed systems thinking, and ownership over full-stack breadth.

You will be a strong fit for this role if you enjoy reasoning deeply about backend systems, solving complex production problems, and driving scalable backend solutions independently in real-world environments.

What you will be doing

• Backend services & APIs: Design, build, and maintain robust backend services and APIs that power Toku’s omnichannel communications platform.

• Integration platform development: Develop and evolve backend integrations connecting Toku’s platform with external communication providers, internal platform services, and asynchronous messaging workflows.

• Event-driven systems: Build and maintain scalable event-driven backend systems using technologies such as Kafka and AWS SQS to support high-volume asynchronous communication workflows across messaging, notification, and voice services.

• System design & architecture: Independently design microservices, define service boundaries, and reason about scalability, latency, reliability, traffic patterns, and architectural trade-offs across distributed systems.

• Cloud-native backend development: Develop and operate backend services on AWS using cloud-native design principles and modern backend engineering practices.

• Production ownership: Own backend systems in production, including reliability, observability, troubleshooting, performance optimisation, incident investigation, and continuous improvement of critical communication services.

• Backend modernisation: Contribute to the ongoing evolution of backend services and platform architecture, including migration toward more scalable event-driven systems and greater adoption of Go across backend services.

• Data & persistence: Design and work with SQL-based data models, ensuring performance, correctness, and alignment with real product usage; exposure to NoSQL technologies is beneficial but not mandatory.

• Technical quality: Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented backend code, and participate actively in technical discussions, code reviews, and backend design decisions.

• Ownership & initiative: Take initiative and drive backend problems through to solutions independently, collaborating effectively with peers across engineering squads and infrastructure teams.

We’d love to hear from you if you have

• Senior backend engineering experience: Hands-on experience building and operating production backend systems, with depth and exposure valued more than strict years of experience.

• Go (Golang): Strong practical experience building backend services and production systems in Go.

• Distributed systems & backend architecture: Proven ability to design scalable microservices, event-driven systems, and backend architectures, including reasoning about scalability, latency, reliability, asynchronous workflows, and system trade-offs.

• Event-driven systems: Practical experience with technologies such as Kafka, AWS SQS, or similar messaging/event-streaming systems.

• Backend integrations & APIs: Experience designing and integrating backend APIs and distributed backend services in production environments.

• Cloud platforms: Strong cloud fundamentals, with AWS experience strongly preferred. Candidates with solid GCP or Azure backgrounds are also welcome if cloud engineering fundamentals are strong.

• Databases: Strong SQL experience, including schema design, query optimisation, and real-world production data handling. Exposure to NoSQL databases such as DynamoDB is beneficial but not mandatory.

• Production mindset: Experience shipping, operating, troubleshooting, and evolving backend systems in real-world production environments.

• Problem ownership: A track record of taking initiative, solving problems independently, and driving backend solutions end-to-end without excessive oversight.

• TypeScript exposure: Experience working with TypeScript-based backend services is useful, particularly when working with existing or legacy services.

• Domain experience (bonus): Exposure to CPaaS, CCaaS, messaging, voice, telephony, or communication platform environments is advantageous.

• Observability & diagnostics (bonus): Familiarity with observability, logging, monitoring, and troubleshooting practices within distributed backend systems is beneficial.

• Location: This role supports globally distributed engineering squads across APAC and Europe. The role can be based in Bangalore, India, or in The Netherlands

Toku has been recognised as a LinkedIn Top Startup and by the Financial Times as one of APAC’s Top 500 High Growth Companies. If you’re looking to be part of a company on a strong growth trajectory while working on meaningful, real-world backend engineering challenges at scale, we’d love to hear from you.