Backend Team Lead

Nanit is moving families beyond overwhelm by transforming how parents understand their baby’s early years. We combine advanced AI, real-world data from billions of sleep hours, and clinical expertise to deliver the clarity and confidence every parent deserves. Trusted by over one million families and backed by $125M in funding, we’re building an entirely new category: predictive parenting intelligence. Here, your work directly impacts millions of families. Our team of scientists, engineers, and parents is small but mighty - we share a mission to make early childhood easier, healthier, and more connected. If you want to work on technology that genuinely matters, join us. As a Backend Team Leader at Nanit, you will lead a team of backend and MLOps engineers that owns the systems behind our AI-driven product features. Your team works closest to our AI group - the Algorithms and Data teams - and owns the engineering side of turning models into reliable production capabilities. Concretely, that means owning real backend architecture - the services and APIs that carry AI-driven capabilities into the product, the data collection pipelines that feed model training, the storage and query layers that hold model outputs and the insights we derive from them, and the validation pipelines that let us trust production flows. You will make the core design decisions on service boundaries, data models, event flows, and scale and cost tradeoffs, in a domain where both the data volume and the correctness bar are high. You do not need to arrive as an ML expert. You do need to be the kind of engineer who walks into an unfamiliar domain, learns it properly, and starts making good decisions in it. What you’ll be doing - Lead and grow the team Manage backend and MLOps engineers, some embedded in product pods; coach on delivery, decision-making, and career growth Set clear expectations for ownership and quality; track progress against team goals, surfacing risks early Own the backend behind our AI features Build and scale data pipelines with the AI group, and design how model insights are stored, queried, and exposed to the product Build validation pipelines and partner with the Algo team to take models from experiment to production Drive architecture direction and alignment Align backend decisions with the wider group, guide design discussions, and keep specs and plans on time Collaborate with the platform team on infrastructure, deployment, and reliability standards Improve reliability and operational readiness Raise the bar on stability, observability, and alert quality Turn recurring issues into focused engineering work; lead debriefs and drive action items to completion Who you are - 8+ years in backend engineering, with proven people leadership as a manager or team lead, delivering in fast-paced environments without micromanaging Strong production experience with web services/APIs on AWS, PostgreSQL, Redis, S3, Kubernetes, and Kafka (including failure handling) Experience with data pipelines (batch/streaming) and monitoring/observability tools - dashboards, logs, metrics, tracing, alerting, and on-call An advantage: familiarity with the ML model lifecycle, Python or exposure to Python-based research teams, big data infrastructure, Computer Vision/Deep Learning, or hands-on use of AI coding tools Ability to inspire, mentor, and grow engineers, with strong self-learning skills in unfamiliar domains Clear communicator across technical and non-technical partners, balancing company priorities with sustainable delivery and team satisfaction Why Nanit? Nanit products can actually change lives. We’re an integral part of the lives of new parents, making an exciting but stressful time a little more manageable. We are international and believe our diversity makes our culture, products, and brand even better. We invest in our people. We consider each employee a long-term investment and we see value in continuously helping them to advance in their lives and careers Nanit is a fun, collaborative group of hard workers! We believe in an appropriate work-life balance and offer a flexible, open environment. We are at the forefront of innovation, creating products and services that have never been seen before. We are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. #IL-Hybrid