Senior (Lead) Backend Engineer - Microservices & Vector Search

About the role

Randstad is hiring a Senior (Lead) Backend Engineer in Diemen, The Netherlands, to design, build and scale high-throughput microservices and data platforms across a hybrid Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and AWS environment. The role leads the core backend architecture behind global labor market taxonomies, search and vector retrieval engines. It is a backend architecture and distributed data engineering position, not a front-end or internal IT support role.

Key responsibilities

• Build and maintain scalable backend services mainly on Google Cloud Platform with integrations into AWS.
• Own the engineering and performance of search engines and vector retrieval workflows powered by AWS OpenSearch.
• Design resilient, event-driven streaming and batch pipelines using modern DataOps best practices.
• Partner with data scientists to deploy production-grade MLOps pipelines in live multi-cloud environments.
• Coach junior and mid-level engineers and shape technical roadmaps and data governance frameworks.

Required profile

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or equivalent technical experience.
• 5+ years of production experience as a Backend or Data Engineer with distributed systems.
• Professional fluency in English, written and spoken.

Required skills

• Advanced Python (main API frameworks) and SQL; Rust is a strong plus.
• 5+ years with GCP and solid familiarity with AWS services.
• Hands-on experience with Apache Beam, Spark, Airflow and CI/CD tools such as GitLab.
• Deep knowledge of distributed search clusters (OpenSearch/Elasticsearch) and vector indexes.

What we offer

• Competitive base salary, variable performance pay and access to the Employee Share Purchase Plan.
• Annual learning budget for GCP/AWS certifications, technical courses and global conferences.
• Workstation setup, home-office budget and full business mobility or commuting allowance.