Backend Engineer - Clikkin, Chennai, India, Remote India

We’re a small bootstrapped product team in India building Clikkin, a community platform. Our backend is Elixir and Phoenix, and we’re looking for one person to own the whole thing: the API, the data model, the infrastructure it runs on, and the judgement calls about how all three should work. You do not need to know Elixir to apply. You need to be a real programmer who can pick it up fast, and we will teach you the rest.

About us

My name: Ragav Yarasi
My position: Founder & CEO
Company name: Clikkin (Yarasi Enterprises Private Limited)
Company website: https://clikkin.com
Company headquarters (country): India
Company info and history (how you’re using Elixir etc):

Clikkin is a community platform. We’re a product startup building our own IP, not an agency, and we’re bootstrapped and pre-revenue. We’re a small team of designers and engineers.

Elixir and Phoenix is our primary backend, on PostgreSQL, serving an Expo and React Native mobile app. We picked the BEAM for the concurrency model: the product is real-time community spaces with voice, presence and messaging, and OTP is the right shape for that. We run our own infrastructure rather than a managed platform, Docker on AWS ECS with Terraform across three AWS accounts, plus GCP and Cloudflare. Python handles specific specialised processes alongside the Elixir: our automoderation pipeline runs there today, and content ranking is next.

About the job

Job title: Backend Engineer

Job description:
You will own the Clikkin backend and the infrastructure it runs on. That means the Phoenix API, the Postgres data model, the deployment pipeline, and the decisions about how they should all fit together. This is not a ticket queue. Your domain is yours to design, defend and improve, and you will be the person who knows it best.

There are two languages here. Elixir and Phoenix is the primary one. Python is used for specific specialised processes, currently automoderation and soon content ranking.

We need mastery of Python from day one. Elixir you will learn here, and quickly. What we are actually looking for is a real programmer with deep command of at least one language, because that transfers and syntax does not.

A word on how we work, because it will not suit everyone. We do not micro-manage, and approaches to problems are not handed down from the top. We arrive at the best path through internal debate and rationales backed by research. We are regularly building things none of us has built before, so the answer usually is not on Stack Overflow and you will read papers, documentation and other people’s source code to find it. That is the work, not a detour from it. If you research your way into unfamiliar territory for fun, you will like it here more than anywhere you have worked. If you want a settled stack and a known problem space, you won’t fit.

Salary range:

₹6,00,000 to ₹10,20,000 per annum (₹50,000 to ₹85,000 per month), depending on experience. Reviewed against written milestones at seven and thirteen months. We are bootstrapped and pre-revenue and we would rather be straight about that up front than waste your time.

Qualifications or experience required:

Strong written and spoken English. This one is non-negotiable, the team is remote and most decisions happen in writing.
Strong programming fundamentals, with Python as your working language
Real experience designing and modelling databases, not just querying them
You have deployed a backend to a VPS yourself and understand what happens underneath
Some DevOps behind you and a genuine appetite to go deeper into it
A track record of teaching yourself languages and frameworks nobody asked you to learn
No prior Elixir, Phoenix or Erlang required. If you have some, it is a bonus, not a gate.
This is an early-career role.

What the successful job applicant will be working on:

Taking full ownership of the Phoenix API and the Postgres schema behind it
Separating our US infrastructure on GCP from our India infrastructure on AWS, which is in progress now
Hardening the infrastructure and acting on a security review
The Python automoderation pipeline, then content ranking
Learning Elixir and OTP properly, with a full handover from the engineer who built the current backend

Position on remote work

Remote job: Yes

Remote restrictions: India only. You need to be resident in India and available during IST working hours.

Remote leeway: None on location for this role. We are a small team and we work synchronously.

Any other notes about your position on remote work: We are fully remote and have been from the start, on a flexible but intense schedule. Nobody is expected in an office, ever.

About the interview process

Four steps, and we move quickly.

Application form. A few minutes. We ask for links to things you have built and a short answer about the hardest bug you have had to find. We read every one and we reply either way.
A short call with me, about twenty minutes, to talk about what you have built and what you want.
A ninety-minute working session with me and our backend engineer. You share your screen, use your own editor, and use whatever AI tools you normally use. We will say this clearly: we want to see how you work, not whether you memorised anything. You will debug some unfamiliar code, pick up something you probably have not used before, and talk through some of our real infrastructure. Nothing to prepare.
A conversation with our backend engineer about the system you would be inheriting, then a reference call and an offer.

No unpaid take-home projects and no algorithm puzzles.