Senior Backend Engineer

What's in it for you?

Join an award-winning culture.

We have been recognized for being a Great Place to Work, in addition to being selected as a FORTUNE Global 500 Company, Best Workplaces Retail & Hospitality, and FORTUNE World's Most Admired Companies.

The opportunities with us are endless.

As the world's largest food and support services company, we offer an extensive range of learning and career opportunities for all our associates.

Health & Safety.

The health and safety of our associates, clients and guests has always been our top priority. We have the right processes in place to ensure our teams have the support they need to stay safe, while helping to keep our guests safe.

Health Benefits.

For our eligible associates, we offer comprehensive health, vision, and dental care coverage.

A Focus on Mental Health and Wellness.

Just now is our Mental Health and Well-Being initiative that was created to share credible resources with our associates and the communities we serve on a variety of topics, including mental, physical, spiritual and financial wellbeing. Visit our Stronger Together Compass website at www.strongertogethercompass.com. We also have an Employment Assistance Program which provides our associates with access to 24/7 support, resources, and information.

We are as diverse as our guests.

We believe diverse and inclusive environments support innovation and collaboration, and benefit our associates, clients, and customers. We are committed to Listen, Learn, and Act and our Diversity Inclusion Action Councils (DIAC) are associate led groups that seek to foster inclusion through cultural awareness, engagement and appreciation of diversity. We are Stronger, Together!

We are CDAI—the data and artificial intelligence engine of Compass Group North America. We design and deliver custom, in-house solutions tailored to the unique complexities of food service and hospitality. Our work is grounded in strong data foundations, layered with AI to enhance forecasting, streamline operations, and enable better, faster decision‑making across Compass Group. With deep integration into the business and a commitment to white‑glove service, CDAI empowers associates, clients, and customers through innovative, future‑forward technologies.

About The Role We are CDAI—the data and artificial intelligence engine of Compass Group North America. We design and deliver custom, in-house solutions tailored to the unique complexities of food service and hospitality. Our work is grounded in strong data foundations, layered with AI to enhance forecasting, streamline operations, and enable better, faster decision‑making across Compass Group. With deep integration into the business and a commitment to white‑glove service, CDAI empowers associates, clients, and customers through innovative, future‑forward technologies.

Position Details

Position Title: Senior Backend Engineer

Salary: 120,000.00 - 160,000.00

Employment Type: Full Time, Permanent

Perks: Bonus, 4 Weeks Vacation, RRSP Match and more!

Hybrid: 3 Days a Week - Toronto

In accordance with provincial legislation and our commitment to transparent hiring practices, the compensation range for this position is provided. Final compensation will be determined based on qualifications, experience, and internal equity. Canadian work experience is not required. Please note that artificial intelligence tools are utilized in the applicant screening process.

Job Summary Now, if you were to come on board as our Senior Backend Engineer, we'd ask you to do the following:

Design, build, and maintain RESTful APIs in Python (preferably FastAPI) with clean contracts, strong validation, and excellent developer ergonomics.

Own backend architecture and design patterns: modular service design, clear separation of concerns, extensibility, and maintainability.

Build for performance and reliability: optimize request/response paths, implement caching and rate limiting where needed, and ensure predictable behavior under load.

Implement async‑first backend systems: strong understanding of event loops, async I/O, FastAPI lifespans, dependency injection patterns, proper error handling, and safe concurrency.

Design background processing workflows: offload heavy/high‑latency work (LLM calls, model runs, long computations) to queues/workers and message brokers; implement retries, idempotency, and DLQs.

Operate production services: logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, runbooks, and post‑incident learning; drive improvements to reliability and cost.

Collaborate cross‑functionally with Data Science, Analytics Engineering, Front‑End, and Product to define API contracts, data requirements, and delivery plans.

Mentor and raise the bar through code reviews, design reviews, and setting engineering standards (testing, CI/CD, documentation, security).

Qualifications

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related STEM field (advanced degree a plus).

6+ years of professional backend engineering experience building and operating production services.

Strong proficiency in Python (OOP is a plus) and SQL, with excellent software engineering fundamentals (testing, code quality, design patterns, system design).

Proven experience building RESTful APIs—ideally with FastAPI—including strong API design practices (validation, versioning, pagination, error handling, auth).

Solid understanding of asynchronous programming in Python (event loop, async I/O), including FastAPI lifespans and concurrency best practices.

Experience designing and running background processing systems (queues/message brokers, workers) with reliability patterns such as retries, idempotency, and dead‑letter handling.

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS and/or GCP) and production operations (logging, metrics, tracing, alerting).

Experience with containerization and modern deployment workflows (Docker; Kubernetes and infrastructure‑as‑code tools are a plus).

Familiarity with event‑driven or real‑time architectures for service integration is a plus.

Exposure to AI‑enabled backend patterns (e.g., LLM integrations, model execution workflows, semantic search/vector databases) is a plus, but not required.

Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence cross‑functional partners and lead technical execution.

Working knowledge of version control (Git) and agile development practices.

Compass Group Canada is committed to nurturing a diverse workforce representative of the communities within which we operate. We encourage and are pleased to consider all qualified candidates, without regard to race, colour, citizenship, religion, sex, marital / family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, aboriginal status, age, disability or persons who may require an accommodation, to apply.

For accommodation requests during the hiring process, please contact PeopleHub@compass-canada.com for further information.

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