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Backend Engineer

LiltWashington D.C.Engineering
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Salary
$100,612 – $138K
Job type
Full-time
Work mode
Remote
Experience
Mid · 2+ yrs
Posted
2 Oct 2026
Status
Open · checked 7d ago

About this role

This role suits a backend software engineer with two to five years of professional experience looking to build real-time translation systems at Lilt in Washington D.C. The position involves designing and operating backend services for the Converse product expansion, focusing on audio ingestion, streaming orchestration, and event-driven routing.

Role Overview

Lilt is hiring a Backend Engineer for the Create team to build backend services powering the Converse product expansion. This includes developing the real-time translation pipeline and meeting-platform integration, taking well-scoped services from design through production. The position is based in Washington, D.C., with preferred locations also including Boston, MA, and Indianapolis, IN. US citizenship and residence in the United States are required for this role.

Key Responsibilities

Build and maintain backend services for the real-time translation pipeline, including audio ingestion, diarization hookups, streaming ASR/MT orchestration, and result fan-out.
Implement event-driven routing logic to flag low-confidence segments and route them to the correct on-call interpreter.
Build APIs and services backing the bot/agent participant and meeting side panel to deliver translation into host meeting platforms.
Contribute to the interpreter correction and broadcast system to ensure corrections are isolated and broadcast in real time.
Write and maintain automated tests and contribute to CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions.
Instrument services for logging, metrics, and tracing to support debugging of latency-sensitive sessions.
Partner with frontend and fullstack engineers to define clean API contracts for the live meeting UI and interpreter workbench.
Participate in on-call rotations and help triage production issues.
Generate post-meeting assets such as diarized transcripts, exportable formats, and verification metadata.

Requirements

Two to five years of professional backend software engineering experience, including production systems handling real-time or streaming data.
Experience building REST API endpoints as well as streaming services with WebSockets, gRPC, message queues, or comparable low-latency patterns.
Solid experience with Node.js/TypeScript, Java, Python, or a comparable backend language/ecosystem, with the ability to work across more than one.
Experience building and consuming REST and GraphQL APIs, including authentication patterns like OAuth and API keys.
Comfort with relational and NoSQL data modeling for session state, transcripts, and configuration data.
Solid grasp of CI/CD practices and automated integration and end-to-end tests.
Ability to ship a well-scoped ticket or spec with minimal oversight while communicating blockers early.
US citizenship and residence in the United States.

Nice to Have

Experience with speech and audio pipelines such as diarization or streaming ASR.
Experience integrating with third-party platform APIs, SDKs, or webhooks for platforms like Slack or Zoom.
Familiarity with localization and translation memory workflows.
Experience with event-driven and pub-sub architectures like Kafka or Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Frontend or React exposure to reason about API contracts with a stateful UI.
Microsoft Teams app or bot development experience.
Experience working on zero-to-one products within an established company.
Interest or coursework in NLP and machine learning systems.
Experience with production observability tools such as Datadog.

Skills and Tools

Node.js
TypeScript
Java
Python
REST APIs
GraphQL
WebSockets
gRPC
GitHub Actions
Datadog

Salary and Benefits

Salary range of $100,612 to $138,000.

About the Company

Lilt uses AI, machine translation, and human-in-the-loop expertise to translate content. Founded in 2015 by former Google Translate researchers, the company is backed by Sequoia, Intel Capital, and Redpoint. Lilt serves global enterprises, the United States Department of Defense, and the United States Air Force.

How to Apply

Candidates should apply on the official company careers page.

Skills and tech stack

Node.jsTypeScriptJavaPythonWebSocketsgRPCGitHub ActionsDatadogGraphQLNLPAzureReactMachine LearningKafka

Questions candidates ask

What are the location requirements for this role?

The position requires US citizenship and residence in the United States, with preferred locations in Washington, D.C., Boston, MA, and Indianapolis, IN.

How many years of experience are required?

The role requires 2 to 5 years of professional backend software engineering experience.

What is the salary range for the Backend Engineer position?

The salary ranges from $100,612 to $138,000.

What technologies will I be working with?

The tech stack includes Node.js, TypeScript, Java, Python, WebSockets, gRPC, GitHub Actions, and Datadog.

Is visa sponsorship available?

Visa sponsorship is not stated in the posting; however, US citizenship and residence are explicitly required.

Ready to apply?

The application is on the official Lilt careers page.

Apply on company site