$148.5k - $223.9k
solutions that are highly available, and a proven ability to design, develop, and optimize the core back-end systems.Your Impact:Deliver... ...Skills:A related technical degree required4+ years backend software developme…
Engineering & IT · Washington, DC
Backend Developer jobs in Washington, DC
Backend developers build the server-side logic, APIs, and data layers that applications run on. The job is designing services that stay correct, fast, and secure as usage grows.
726
Open roles today
$43–$114/hr
Typical pay range
$153k
Median, full-time
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Fresh in this list
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01
Open backend developer roles
7 shown of 726 · sorted by freshness
$120.8k - $265.8k
Type: RegularPercentage of Travel Required: Up to 10%Type of Travel: Local* * *The Opportunity:CACI is seeking a skilled Full Stack Developer to support the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector G…
$191k - $253k
Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century…
We are seeking an IAM Full Stack Developer with strong experience in Identity and Access Management, PingOne integrations, Java/Spring Boot, front-end development, and cloud-native technologies. The ideal candidate will…
$176.4k - $226.8k
transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools... ...their finances. You will work across the stack, from reliable backend servi…
Ruby on Rails Tech Lead to lead development teams in designing, developing, and delivering scalable software solutions. The ideal... ...Design and optimize application architecture, APIs, databases, and backend services.…
About the Role The onshore Senior Back-End Engineer leads backend microservices architecture and build quality for the platform,... ...handling. Azure-certified or demonstrable hands-on Azure cloud experience (AZ-204 Dev…
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What backend developers earn in Washington
Hourly first — that's how the offer arrives
| Experience | Hourly | Annual, full-time |
|---|---|---|
| Entry level | $43–$60 | $90k–$125k |
| Mid level | $60–$87 | $125k–$181k |
| Senior | $84–$114 | $175k–$238k |
Adjusted for the Washington market from national ranges.
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What employers ask for
The skills these listings keep naming
A server language (Java, Go, Python, C#)API design (REST, gRPC)SQL and schema designCaching and queuesAuthentication and securityDistributed systems basicsDocker and CI/CDObservability and logging
04
Interview questions worth rehearsing
With the thing the interviewer is actually listening for
Design an API for a feature like comments or notifications.
Clarify requirements, then cover endpoints, data model, pagination, and error handling. Mentioning versioning and rate limits shows production experience.
How would you find and fix a slow database query?
Walk through reading the query plan, checking indexes, and considering caching or denormalization. Ground it in a query you actually fixed.
How do you keep two services consistent when both need to update data?
Discuss transactions, idempotency, and eventual consistency with outbox or saga patterns. Acknowledge tradeoffs rather than promising perfect consistency.
What do you monitor on a service you own?
Name the basics — latency, error rate, saturation — plus business-level signals. Bonus points for talking about alerts you tuned to reduce noise.
Tell me about a production incident you handled.
Structure it: detection, mitigation, root cause, prevention. Emphasize what changed afterward, not just the firefight.
How do you approach securing an API?
Cover authentication, authorization, input validation, and secrets handling. Naming OWASP-style risks concretely is enough; you are not expected to be a security engineer.
When would you choose a message queue over a direct call?
Talk about decoupling, retries, and absorbing spikes, and be honest about the added complexity of async debugging.
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Resume tips that move the needle
For backend developers specifically — generic advice costs you here
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State scale where you can: requests per second, data volume, or number of services — it is the fastest way to signal seniority.
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Name the databases and infrastructure you ran in production, not just languages.
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Describe reliability work — migrations without downtime, incident reduction, test coverage on critical paths.
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If you designed an API others consume, say so and note how many teams or clients depend on it.
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Avoid listing every framework you have touched; two stacks with depth read better than eight without.
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Where this role goes
Typical progression
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Junior Backend Developer
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Backend Developer
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Senior Backend Developer
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Staff Engineer
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Principal Engineer
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