Backend Architect

Company Overview 

10Pearls is an end-to-end digital technology services partner helping businesses utilize technology as a competitive advantage. We help our customers digitalize their existing business, build innovative new products, and augment their existing teams with high-performance team members. Our broad expertise in product management, user experience/design, cloud architecture, software development, data insights and intelligence, cybersecurity, emerging tech, and quality assurance ensures that we are delivering solutions that address business needs. 

10Pearls is proud to have a diverse clientele including large enterprises, SMBs, and high-growth startups. We work with clients across industries, including healthcare/life sciences, education, energy, communications/media, financial services, and hi-tech. Our many long-term, successful partnerships are built upon trust, integrity, and successful delivery and execution. 

Role 

We are seeking a Backend Architect to lead the design and evolution of a next-generation AI-native platform (AIX), with a primary focus on the Ontology Layer (L3)—the semantic core of the system. 

This role requires strong architectural ownership and hands-on expertise in building scalable, secure, and multi-tenant backend systems. The ideal candidate will define data models, API contracts, and cross-layer communication patterns while collaborating closely with product, architecture, and engineering teams in an onsite environment in Islamabad. 
 

Responsibilities 

• Design and own backend architecture with a focus on scalability, reliability, fault tolerance and multi-tenant systems  

  
  

• Architect and implement the ontology layer, including PostgreSQL schema design (object types, relationships, properties, governance and policy entities) with optimized indexing and row-level security  

  
  

• Define and maintain API contracts using GraphQL or REST, ensuring secure tenant isolation, versioning and efficient data access patterns  

  
  

• Design and manage event-driven communication across system layers using Kafka or equivalent technologies  

  
  

• Develop and govern action workflows (e.g., propose → simulate → approve → execute) with strong auditability, rollback strategies and control mechanisms  

  
  

• Write reference implementations, review code, and establish engineering standards for performance, testing, observability and reliability. 

  
  

• Lead and mentor a team of backend engineers, conduct design reviews, and drive architectural decision-making  

  
  

• Define service-level objectives (SLOs), conduct load testing, and ensure high availability and system resilience. 

  
  

• Design and govern cloud-native deployment architectures, including networking, storage, scalability, and cost optimization strategies across environments (cloud, hybrid, or on‑prem). 

  
  

• Collaborate with AI/ML teams to define safe and controlled interaction patterns between the ontology layer, agents, and LLM-driven components. 

  
  

Requirements 

• 6–8 years of experience building production-grade backend systems with demonstrated architectural ownership. 

  
  

• Strong proficiency in Python (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, AsyncIO) or equivalent backend technologies  

  
  

• Deep expertise in PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, migrations, and row-level security. 

  
  

• Working understanding of how LLMs and AI agents interact with backend systems, including constraints, feedback loops, and data governance considerations.  

  
  

• Solid experience in API design (GraphQL or REST at scale)  

  
  

• Hands-on experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka or similar)  

  
  

• Proven experience designing multi-tenant systems or platform architectures  

  
  

• Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts (consistency, fault tolerance, observability)  

  
  

• Experience with Kubernetes and containerized environments  

  
  

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience with design documentation and architecture decision records. 

  
  

Nice to Have: 

• Experience with policy-as-code frameworks (OPA, Rego, ABAC)  

  
  

• Exposure to AI/LLM-based systems or agent-driven platforms  

  
  

• Experience with air-gapped or on-premise deployments  

  
  

• Familiarity with audit logging or tamper-evident systems  

  
  

• Contributions to open-source backend or data platform projects