Your mission VIDA’s Energy Access planning platform as well as its Climate Risk Engine delivers advanced geospatial insights to governments, development partners, and private-sector organizations worldwide. These insights, derived from continent- to global scale datasets we create and visualize, inform critical decisions in energy planning, infrastructure resilience, and sustainable development - from electrification planning in developing nations to climate risk assessments in mature markets. We are looking for a Cloud Backend Engineer to join our Technology team to help us build these products. While your primarily focus is on building and maintaining the necessary cloud infrastructure and the backend, we are looking for an enthusiastic all-rounder who is keen to get into whichever part of the stack which needs work. <h2>What You’ll Do</h2><h3>Core work: Cloud engineering and infrastructure</h3><ul><li>Own and optimize our cloud infrastructure on GCP, ensuring secure, reliable, and cost‑efficient systems. Services and topics include networking, IAM, serverless (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions), data services (Cloud SQL, Neon, GCS, BigQuery), Pub/Sub, API Gateway, and secrets management.</li><li>Build and maintain observability with Datadog by creating actionable dashboards and monitors, strengthening logging and security compliance, and proactively investigating anomalies.</li><li>Operate and improve our container and orchestration stack by managing Kubernetes (including Helm, ingress, and ArgoCD) and Docker to deliver resilient, scalable services.</li><li>Elevate developer experience by shaping CI/CD with GitHub Actions, enabling testing frameworks, streamlining deployments to serverless and Kubernetes, managing packages and artifacts, and unblocking teammates day to day.</li><li>Lead core security practices as part of our ISMS team, ensuring we keep up our ISO 27001 certification, identifying and addressing security-related issues, coordinating external tests (e.g. pentests), and leveraging tools like Vanta.</li><li>Help administer key tools and integrations by managing Slack, Linear, Notion, GitHub connectivity, handling user and access management, and overseeing Google Workspace email and group configuration.</li></ul><h3>Backend work</h3><ul><li>Own authentication and authorization end to end, designing and implementing RBAC with tools like Auth0 and OSO to ensure secure, least‑privilege access.</li><li>Maintain and evolve our data layer by keeping databases, schemas, and migrations accurate, performant, and well documented across environments.</li><li>Contribute across the stack when needed, with bonus if you bring front‑end JavaScript experience</li><li>Help prototype and develop AI powered features in the VIDA platform.</li><li>Help build internal tools for our data solutions and sales teams (e.g. Retool, Streamlit)</li><li>Build, test, and operate the APIs that power our platform, enabling reliable access to climate risk data and integrations with internal and third‑party systems.</li><li>Design, debug, and harden geospatial data pipelines, turning raw inputs into the datasets we deliver to customers with strong guarantees on quality, performance, and observability.</li><li>Be a mentor and a role model when it comes to writing clean, performant and well tested services in Python.</li></ul> Is it you we’re looking for? <ul><li>You know your craft. You have some years of experience under your belt (ideally 5+). You have  strong Python skills and are well familiar with its ecosystem. You're used to writing clean code and you're versed in design patterns and best practices and know when to use them. You have built complex APIs before, and are familiar with things like what makes an API RESTful. You're used to thoroughly testing your work.You know databases and ORMs. You've used Auth solutions such as OAuth, JWT and RBAC.</li><li>You know the cloud (GCP preferred) and DevOps principles. You're familiar with CI/CD pipelines, and have worked with Docker and Kubernetes, and serverless services.</li><li>You have experience with IaaC (Terraform preferred)</li><li>You have knowledge of infrastructure monitoring: You've used monitoring/observability tools such as Datadog.</li><li>You care about Developer Experience and are keen to help improve how we build, test and ship software.</li><li>You have a product-first mentality. You like to get involved in the entire development lifecycle and are a strong advocate for the user. You're used to working in an iterative fashion and experimenting.</li><li>Flexibility: Comfortable working in a dynamic, evolving environment, collaborating across multiple teams and supervisors, and adapting to shifting priorities as the business and strategy progress.</li><li>You're a great communicator and team player. You're comfortably fluent in English. You're used to working remotely with distributed teams in an effective manner. You're used to documenting your work and sharing knowledge with others. You appreciate the importance of cultivating warm and respectful relationships.</li><li>AI-Forward Approach: Enthusiasm for using AI tools in methodology development and software engineering, and openness to promoting their adoption within the team.</li></ul><h3>Nice to haves:</h3><ul><li>You have frontend development experience with JavaScript.</li><li>Previous experience working in the field of ESG, environmental, climate tech.</li><li>Experience with the geospatial stack is a big plus (e.g. STAC, PMTiles, COGs, Raster / Vector files, etc.)</li><li>Experience with the emerging AI stack. Familiarity with the LLM/agentic stack, including RAG, vector databases, LLMs etc.</li><li>You have a good understanding of what it takes to scale a platform. </li></ul> What we offer <ul><li>Mission: VIDA is more than just another software company. As our work goes beyond lines of code and interfaces you’ll have the chance to create tangible impact in real lives.</li><li>Impact &amp; growth: It’s an exciting time to join us! Shape our success story and company culture from the ground up and see the direct influence of your work.</li><li>Diversity: Our team's diversity is truly exceptional. With more than 15 nationalities on board already today and team members spread across the globe, you'll connect and learn from a wide range of perspectives.</li><li>Participation in our VSOP program: At VIDA, all team members are included in our VSOP program, ensuring everyone shares in our success.</li><li>Fully remote working &amp; flexibility: We're strong advocates of autonomy and flexibility. We allow you to determine when and where you get your stuff done most effectively.</li><li>Tech &amp; tools: We understand the importance of having the right tools to empower your work and will provide you with the latest technology and tools.</li><li>Educational &amp; setup budget: 500€ educational budget per year that you can use for any kind of learning resource &amp; 500€ setup budget for any equipment of your choice.</li><li>28 vacation days + public holidays in your country of residence.</li></ul>And in addition to that you will <ul><li>have direct impact on climate risk assessment tools used globally by governments, development organizations, and the private sector.</li><li>work in a diverse, multicultural, and collaborative environment, where your contributions will help refine how our Climate Risk Engine is applied and improved as the business evolves.</li><li>become part of a diverse, multicultural team where your contributions will influence how our Climate Risk Engine is applied and improved, and where you’ll collaborate across functions and geographies as the business evolves.</li></ul> Sounds exciting? If you're passionate about leveraging the power of technology to drive meaningful social impact and joining a mission-driven environment, we would love to hear from you.  When applying, please state your expected salary in gross per a year. Learn more about VIDA and our current projects at <a href="https://www.vida.place/">vida.place</a> or on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vida-place/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true">LinkedIn</a>. We're looking forward to receiving your application! In case your experience doesn’t fit all of the criteria, make sure to get in touch anyways!

VIDA is an impact-driven startup enabling companies to track their impact across thousands or even millions of locations. With our diverse team of 34 colleagues from more than 15 nationalities, we are passionate about making a positive difference in the world.

Cloud Backend Engineer

Your mission VIDA’s Energy Access planning platform as well as its Climate Risk Engine delivers advanced geospatial insights to governments, development partners, and private-sector organizations worldwide. These insights, derived from continent- to global scale datasets we create and visualize, inform critical decisions in&nbsp;energy planning, infrastructure resilience, and sustainable development - from electrification planning in developing nations to climate risk assessments in mature markets. We are looking for a Cloud Backend Engineer to join our&nbsp;Technology team to help us build these products. While your primarily focus is on building and maintaining the necessary cloud infrastructure and the backend, we are looking for an enthusiastic all-rounder who is keen to get into whichever part of the stack which needs work. <h2>What You’ll Do</h2><h3>Core work: Cloud engineering and infrastructure</h3><ul><li>Own and optimize our cloud infrastructure on GCP, ensuring secure, reliable, and cost‑efficient systems. Services and topics include networking, IAM, serverless (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions), data services (Cloud SQL, Neon, GCS, BigQuery), Pub/Sub, API Gateway, and secrets management.</li><li>Build and maintain observability with Datadog by creating actionable dashboards and monitors, strengthening logging and security compliance, and proactively investigating anomalies.</li><li>Operate and improve our container and orchestration stack by managing Kubernetes (including Helm, ingress, and ArgoCD) and Docker to deliver resilient, scalable services.</li><li>Elevate developer experience by shaping CI/CD with GitHub Actions, enabling testing frameworks, streamlining deployments to serverless and Kubernetes, managing packages and artifacts, and unblocking teammates day to day.</li><li>Lead core security practices as part of our ISMS team, ensuring we keep up our ISO 27001 certification, identifying and addressing security-related issues, coordinating external tests (e.g. pentests), and leveraging tools like Vanta.</li><li>Help administer key tools and integrations by managing Slack, Linear, Notion, GitHub connectivity, handling user and access management, and overseeing Google Workspace email and group configuration.</li></ul><h3>Backend work</h3><ul><li>Own authentication and authorization end to end, designing and implementing RBAC with tools like Auth0 and OSO to ensure secure, least‑privilege access.</li><li>Maintain and evolve our data layer by keeping databases, schemas, and migrations accurate, performant, and well documented across environments.</li><li>Contribute across the stack when needed, with bonus if you bring front‑end JavaScript experience</li><li>Help prototype and develop AI powered features in the VIDA platform.</li><li>Help build internal tools for our data solutions and sales teams (e.g. Retool, Streamlit)</li><li>Build, test, and operate the APIs that power our platform, enabling reliable access to climate risk data and integrations with internal and third‑party systems.</li><li>Design, debug, and harden geospatial data pipelines, turning raw inputs into the datasets we deliver to customers with strong guarantees on quality, performance, and observability.</li><li>Be a mentor and a role model when it comes to writing clean, performant and well tested services in Python.</li></ul> Is it you we’re looking for? <ul><li>You know your craft. You have some years of experience under your belt (ideally 5+). You have &nbsp;strong Python skills and are well familiar with its ecosystem. You're used to writing clean code and you're versed in design patterns and best practices and know when to use them. You have built complex APIs before, and are familiar with things like what makes an API RESTful. You're used to thoroughly testing your work.You know databases and ORMs. You've used Auth solutions such as OAuth, JWT and RBAC.</li><li>You know the cloud (GCP preferred) and DevOps principles. You're familiar with CI/CD pipelines, and have worked with Docker and Kubernetes, and serverless services.</li><li>You have experience with IaaC (Terraform preferred)</li><li>You have knowledge of infrastructure monitoring: You've used monitoring/observability tools such as Datadog.</li><li>You care about Developer Experience and are keen to help improve how we build, test and ship software.</li><li>You have a product-first mentality. You like to get involved in the entire development lifecycle and are a strong advocate for the user. You're used to working in an iterative fashion and experimenting.</li><li>Flexibility: Comfortable working in a dynamic, evolving environment, collaborating across multiple teams and supervisors, and adapting to shifting priorities as the business and strategy progress.</li><li>You're a great communicator and team player. You're comfortably fluent in English. You're used to working remotely with distributed teams in an effective manner. You're used to documenting your work and sharing knowledge with others. You appreciate the importance of cultivating warm and respectful relationships.</li><li>AI-Forward Approach: Enthusiasm for using AI tools in methodology development and software engineering, and openness to promoting their adoption within the team.</li></ul><h3>Nice to haves:</h3><ul><li>You have frontend development experience with JavaScript.</li><li>Previous experience working in the field of ESG, environmental, climate tech.</li><li>Experience with the geospatial stack is a big plus (e.g. STAC, PMTiles, COGs, Raster / Vector files, etc.)</li><li>Experience with the emerging AI stack.&nbsp;Familiarity with the LLM/agentic stack, including RAG, vector databases, LLMs etc.</li><li>You have a good understanding of what it takes to scale a platform. </li></ul> What we offer <ul><li>Mission: VIDA is more than just another software company. As our work goes beyond lines of code and interfaces you’ll have the chance to create tangible impact in real lives.</li><li>Impact&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;growth: It’s an exciting time to join us! Shape our success story and company culture from the ground up and see the direct influence of your work.</li><li>Diversity: Our team's diversity is truly exceptional. With more than 15 nationalities on board already today and team members spread across the globe, you'll connect and learn from a wide range of perspectives.</li><li>Participation in our VSOP program: At VIDA, all team members are included in our VSOP program, ensuring everyone shares in our success.</li><li>Fully&nbsp;remote&nbsp;working&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;flexibility: We're strong advocates of autonomy and flexibility. We allow you to determine when and where you get your stuff done most effectively.</li><li>Tech&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;tools: We understand the importance of having the right tools to empower your work and will provide you with the latest technology and tools.</li><li>Educational&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;setup&nbsp;budget: 500€ educational budget per year that you can use for any kind of learning resource &amp; 500€ setup budget for any equipment of your choice.</li><li>28 vacation days + public holidays in your country of residence.</li></ul>And in addition to that you will <ul><li>have direct impact on climate risk assessment tools used globally by governments, development organizations, and the private sector.</li><li>work in a diverse, multicultural, and collaborative environment, where your contributions will help refine how our Climate Risk Engine is applied and improved as the business evolves.</li><li>become part of a diverse, multicultural team where your contributions will influence how our Climate Risk Engine is applied and improved, and where you’ll collaborate across functions and geographies as the business evolves.</li></ul> Sounds exciting? If you're passionate about leveraging the power of technology to drive meaningful social impact and joining a mission-driven environment, we would love to hear from you.&nbsp; When applying, please state your expected salary in gross per a year. Learn more about VIDA and our current projects at <a href="https://www.vida.place/">vida.place</a> or on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/vida-place/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true">LinkedIn</a>. We're looking forward to receiving your application! In case your experience doesn’t fit all of the criteria, make sure to get in touch anyways!

Cloud Backend Engineer

About the Job

About the Company

VIDA.place GmbH