Backend Engineer (Python / FastAPI)

About Plane

Plane's mission is to build the infrastructure the world's work runs on. We want teams to move faster without losing context, and organizations to retain the flexibility and control they need. Our team is building that work infrastructure as an open, adaptable platform for projects, knowledge, and requests-simple enough for any team to adopt and dependable enough for organizations to build on.

Plane began in public on GitHub at the end of 2022. Since then, it has grown from an open-source project into a work management platform used by teams around the world. Organizations can use Plane as a managed Cloud service, run it on their own infrastructure, or deploy it inside fully isolated environments. Building in the open keeps us close to users and raises the standard for what we ship.

We believe the future of work will be shaped by people and agents working together. That makes shared context, explicit state, durable history, and accountable action more important-not less. Plane exists to make that future useful, legible, and within the organizations control.

Plane is backed by OSS Capital and built across San Francisco and Hyderabad. We work in small, collaborative teams, stay close to users, and care about both the visible product experience and the unglamorous details that make software dependable. People own problems end to end and add process only when it helps the work.

We are still early. If you want to help define what work infrastructure becomes-and build software that teams can make their own and organizations can depend on-wed like to hear from you.

About the Role

This role is at the heart of building and scaling the API infrastructure that powers Planes core platform. The Backend Engineer will lead the design and development of high-performance, production-grade APIs using FastAPI, while working alongside a team that values clean architecture, developer experience, and open-source impact. You will work with modern backend technologies - including asynchronous Python, event-driven systems, and advanced caching - to ensure our platform remains fast, reliable, and scalable as we grow.

Collaboration, technical ownership, and a passion for shipping meaningful software to the open-source community are central to thriving in this role.

What You Will Do

• Design, build, and maintain high-performance REST APIs using FastAPI as the primary framework.
• Architect and implement asynchronous, non-blocking backend services that scale with our growing user base.
• Drive real-time data synchronization across platform services using event-driven patterns and change-data-capture (CDC).
• Improve system performance through advanced caching strategies, connection pooling, and query optimization.
• Strengthen platform reliability through robust observability, monitoring, and alerting - enabling fast and confident incident response.
• Contribute to architectural and infrastructural upgrades that enhance system scalability and resilience.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with frontend, DevOps, and product teams to deliver seamless, user-centric features.
• Share innovations and contribute meaningfully to Planes open-source community.
• Help define and elevate engineering best practices across the backend team.

Skills You Will Need to Bring

• Strong hands-on expertise in FastAPI - this is the primary requirement for this role.
• Proficiency in Python; experience with Django is a plus but not required.
• Solid understanding of asynchronous programming in Python (asyncio, async/await patterns).
• A self-starter with a bias for ownership - you take problems end-to-end.
• Demonstrated experience building and scaling backend systems in production environments.
• Strong grasp of database design, performance tuning, and deployment strategies.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, distributed engineering team.
• 3-5 years of proven experience in backend development, with at least 2 years working specifically with FastAPI
• Familiarity with GraphQL will be considered a strong plus.

Tech

• FastAPI (primary), Django/Python (secondary), Golang, NodeJS, Postgres, and Redis in the backend.
• Hosted on AWS Cloud with Kubernetes (k8s) and Rancher.
• Experience with message queues and task scheduling using RabbitMQ or Kafka.
• Monitored with DataDog and Sentry.
• Tools: GitHub, Slack, Plane, Figma, Whimsical.

Why Join Plane?

• Be part of a global product team driving meaningful impact worldwide.

• Thrive in a collaborative, innovation-driven environment that prioritizes continuous learning.

• Experience a vibrant and supportive company culture.

• Join a high-growth organization with exciting opportunities for advancement.