Backend Developer/Creative Technologist
Description
This is a short-term position; 1099 is preferred, but W-2 may be considered for the right candidate.
If your portfolio is not directly linked on your resume, please upload the link or file in the cover letter section.
Project Overview:
Our "big tech" client is looking for a Backend Developer/Creative Technologist for their Demos and Experiments team. This is an events team that makes demos showcasing the latest technology and AI models, crafting informative, inspiring, and highly interactive web applications that manifest as in-person experiences at their most high-profile industry events and conferences.
Role Description:
As a Backend Developer/Creative Technologist, your primary services revolve around rapid prototyping, technical strategy, and systems integration. You are the engineer responsible for making the concept a reality on the backend.
Technical Feasibility & Prototyping:
Responsibilities:
Key Objectives & Deliverables Per Program: These are the concrete, tangible outputs your collaborators (internal teams, agency partners, and event staff) will depend on.
1. Technical Design Document (TDD):
A successful candidate would be a strong Python and Node.js developer who is obsessed with AI and well-experienced in working on Google Cloud. Their core skill is not just calling these AI services as API’s, but creatively orchestrating them. They can look at a new product like Gemini API and immediately prototype a backend in Cloud Run and AppEngine that connects it to BigQuery or Feature Store and a Cloud Storage bucket, then document that API for an agency partner to build a beautiful front end on top of.
Our "big tech" client is looking for a Backend Developer/Creative Technologist for their Demos and Experiments team. This is an events team that makes demos showcasing the latest technology and AI models, crafting informative, inspiring, and highly interactive web applications that manifest as in-person experiences at their most high-profile industry events and conferences.
Role Description:
As a Backend Developer/Creative Technologist, your primary services revolve around rapid prototyping, technical strategy, and systems integration. You are the engineer responsible for making the concept a reality on the backend.
Technical Feasibility & Prototyping:
- Ideation & R&D: Actively participate in brainstorms with agency partners and internal teams to vet creative ideas against technical reality.
- Rapid Prototyping: Build small, functional backend prototypes (e.g. a single API endpoint, a data pipeline proof-of-concept) to quickly validate or invalidate a demo concept.
- “Art of the Possible” Consultation: Serve as the go-to expert for agency partners, showing them what is new and possible using the latest Google Cloud products (e.g. Gemini models, Vertex AI agents, Gemini Enterprise, Firebase, Feature Store, BigQuery).
- Demo-Specific Architecture: Design the complete backend system for the demo, focusing on modularity, scalability for multiple simultaneous conference-type event traffic, and ease of integration with the frontend.
- API Development: Design, Document, and Build REST APIs in Python and Node.js (Bun specifically, strongly typed via Pydantic and Typescript) that the demo’s frontend (built by an agency or internal team) will interface with.
- Rock Solid API Orchestration: Write the “glue code” that connects multiple Google Cloud services in hardened and stable ways.
- Internal Engineering Liaison: Act as the primary technical point of contact for internal product teams. You will “translate” the demo’s needs into technical requests for them.
- Agency Partner Enablement: Onboard agency developers to your backend, provide them with documentation, and provide support for troubleshooting integration issues.
- Data & Service Integration: Integrate the demo with live Google Cloud services, internal-only APIs, and any necessary third-party data sources.
- Dataset Curation: Work with product teams to source, sanitize, and prepare the compelling datasets (e.g., product catalogs, financial data, genomic sequences) that will make the demo real.
- Generative AI Grounding: Implement the backend logic for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), connecting generative models to a vector database (like Vertex AI Search) to provide grounded, factual responses.
- Model Customizations & Fine-Tuning: Working with other client engineers, prepare datasets and create customized models using AutoML, and create fine-tuned versions of existing models.
Responsibilities:
Key Objectives & Deliverables Per Program: These are the concrete, tangible outputs your collaborators (internal teams, agency partners, and event staff) will depend on.
1. Technical Design Document (TDD):
- A concise but complete document detailing the demo’s architecture.
- Includes: A system diagram, choice of Google Cloud services and the justification for each, API specifications, data models, and potential failure points.
- Working, shareable code (often in a Colab notebook or simple web app) that demonstrates the core “magic” of the demo (e.g., “Yes, we can take an image upload, get an embedding, and find 5 similar products in <500ms”).
- The production backend services, containerized (using Cloud Run Services, Cloud Run Functions, Cloud Run Jobs, and AppEngine), and deployed on Google Cloud.
- A clear, simple guide for the agency or frontend team, with strongly typed inputs and outputs for the frontend developers to integrate.
- Prepare and deploy the demo’s datasets (e.g., Firestore, BigQuery)
- Collaborate on a brief document outlining the on-call/support process for the event, escalation paths (i.e. who to call from the internal product team if a core service has an issue), and common troubleshooting steps.
A successful candidate would be a strong Python and Node.js developer who is obsessed with AI and well-experienced in working on Google Cloud. Their core skill is not just calling these AI services as API’s, but creatively orchestrating them. They can look at a new product like Gemini API and immediately prototype a backend in Cloud Run and AppEngine that connects it to BigQuery or Feature Store and a Cloud Storage bucket, then document that API for an agency partner to build a beautiful front end on top of.
Qualifications (Minimum required skills for Core Backend & API Stack):
- Programming Languages: You must be fluent in both:
- Python + Pydantic
- Node.js + TypeScript + Bun runtime
- Tools:
- Flask, FastAPI
- Cloud Build
- Cloud Run (Service, Functions, Jobs)
- AppEngine
- Feature Store
- BigTable
- Cloud Storage
- Vertex AI Platform
- VSCode
- Mise
- UV+Ruff
- People who want to learn, but are self-motivated in learning from their projects.
- People who enjoy the really hard problems.
- People who enjoy having too much vs. too little to do.
- People who like creating from nothing (We are still building out processes that will support our continued rapid growth).
- People who understand how to build and maintain relationships with their coworkers and their clients.
- People who like making others successful and understand the value of that as much as making themselves successful.
- People who leave their ego at home and really enjoy working with other brilliant people.
- People who not only can thrive in ambiguity but prefer informing frameworks and structures themselves
About Marvel Marketers
Marvel Marketers (www.marvelmarketers.com) is a global Marketing Automation, Digital Marketing, Experience Management, and ABM Consultancy. Our clients are sophisticated so we only hire the best to keep up and add value along the entire Digital Marketing Maturity Curve. We also partner strategically on custom digital marketing roles to help support all areas of our client's Digital Marketing Strategy.
As we continue to grow and expand our service offerings, we are looking for the best and brightest to join our team. If you applied for a previous role, apply again! Our needs continuously change and evolve.