DevOps & Backend Engineer

DevOps & Backend Engineer

Location: Remote
Company: Vendogram AI Academy Inc., Canada
Contract: 6-month renewable contractor agreement
Reports to: Founder & CEO
Schedule: Must have regular overlap with Eastern Time, Canada

About Vendogram

Vendogram AI Academy Inc. is a Canadian AI education company building hands-on AI programs and private AI learning environments for schools, universities, legal education programs, clinics, research groups, and training institutions.

We are building xPods, dedicated private AI environments for controlled learning, research, and supervised training. The platform includes document ingestion, OCR, retrieval, local/private AI inference, citation-grounded answers, workspaces, role-based access, audit logs, admin tools, monitoring, and corpus governance.

Role Summary

We are looking for a hands-on DevOps & Backend Engineer to help build, deploy, and operate Vendogram’s private AI platform.

This role combines backend engineering, Docker-based deployment, Linux server operations, monitoring, automation, and platform reliability. You will help package services, build backend APIs, automate deployments, manage containers, support observability, and make the platform repeatable across dedicated customer environments.

This is a builder role. You should be comfortable moving between backend code, Docker, Linux, deployment scripts, logs, databases, APIs, and production troubleshooting.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain backend services for the Vendogram platform
• Containerize services using Docker and Docker Compose
• Create repeatable deployment scripts and environment setup processes
• Help deploy and manage services on Linux-based servers
• Support API services, authentication, RBAC, workspace logic, ingestion workflows, and admin tools
• Help integrate backend services with databases, object storage, vector search, AI/RAG services, and background workers
• Set up logging, monitoring, health checks, alerts, and operational dashboards
• Support backup, restore, update, and rollback processes
• Troubleshoot deployment, networking, service, database, and container issues
• Help define and maintain runbooks, technical documentation, and operational procedures
• Work with AI/ML and product contributors to deploy RAG, OCR, embedding, and inference-related services
• Improve reliability, repeatability, observability, and maintainability of the platform

Required Skills

• Strong Docker experience
• Strong Linux server experience
• Backend engineering experience
• Experience building or maintaining REST APIs
• Experience with Python, Node.js, or similar backend frameworks
• Experience with databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL
• Experience with background workers, queues, or async jobs
• Experience with Git and basic CI/CD workflows
• Ability to troubleshoot logs, containers, ports, services, storage, and networking issues
• Understanding of environment variables, secrets, configuration, and deployment hygiene
• Ability to write clear technical documentation and runbooks
• Ability to work independently and communicate clearly

Nice to Have

• Experience with FastAPI, Django, Express, NestJS, or similar frameworks
• Experience with PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO/S3-compatible object storage, or vector databases
• Experience with AI/RAG systems, embeddings, OCR, or LLM inference services
• Experience with Ollama, vLLM, Hugging Face, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar tools
• Experience with monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK, OpenTelemetry, or similar
• Experience with Nginx, reverse proxies, SSL/TLS, DNS, and secure networking
• Experience with authentication, RBAC, SSO, Entra ID, or identity integrations
• Experience with backup/restore processes and disaster recovery planning
• Experience with GPU-enabled workloads or NVIDIA drivers
• Experience with Kubernetes is a plus, but Docker competence is more important for this role

What You Will Work On

• Dockerized platform services
• Backend APIs and admin functions
• Customer workspace services
• Document ingestion and OCR pipelines
• RAG service integration
• Citation and retrieval workflows
• Role-based access and audit logging
• Deployment automation
• Monitoring and health checks
• Backup and restore workflows
• Control plane and dedicated customer environment operations

Success Measures

Success in this role will be measured by:

• Services can be deployed consistently and repeatably
• Docker environments are clean, documented, and maintainable
• Backend services are stable, testable, and easy to operate
• Logs, metrics, and health checks make issues easier to diagnose
• Deployment and update processes become less manual over time
• Backup and restore procedures are documented and tested
• Technical work supports a secure, private, and reliable platform experience

Application Requirements

Applicants should submit:

• CV or resume
• GitHub profile or code samples, if available
• Examples of backend or DevOps projects
• Description of Docker-based systems they have built or maintained
• Expected monthly compensation
• Earliest available start date
• Confirmation of availability to overlap with Eastern Time, Canada

Pay: E£20,000.00 - E£50,000.00 per month

Work Location: Remote