Lead Back-End Engineer at Farmer's Fridge Careers
Chicago, IL
$165,000–$180,000
Aug 10, 2026
Chicago, IL
Sep 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This is a senior/lead back-end engineering role on the team that builds and maintains the embedded software running on Farmer's Fridge smart vending machines. The engineer will own complex projects end-to-end — from architecture through deployment — work across greenfield and legacy Go-based systems, integrate with hardware and device firmware, and help shape the company's approach to LLM-assisted development. Mentorship and raising engineering standards across the team are explicit expectations.
Senior level · 10+ years · Chicago, IL · Full-time
Pay in the description: $165,000–$180,000
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How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 230 people in the Chicago, IL area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 95–340
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $137,335 (middle half $106,829–$171,337). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 12, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The title 'Lead Back-End Engineer (SE IV)' maps to a senior individual-contributor level; the role has mentorship and technical leadership responsibilities but no explicit people-management (hiring, budget) duties, so it is classified as Senior rather than a management role.
Go is listed with the qualifier 'or an equivalent language' — alternatives are not named, so the requirement is treated as a hard gate on strong back-end systems programming experience, with Go as the canonical named tool.
Hardware integration with third-party device firmware and Linux-based environments is stated as a required qualification without a qualifier, so it is treated as a hard gate.
LLM fluency is framed with firm language ('we expect our engineers to be fluent with these tools') in the role description and reinforced in the qualifications section, so it is treated as a hard gate.
AWS cloud experience is explicitly called 'a plus' in the qualifications section, so it is marked as preferred.
Side-project experience is also explicitly called 'a plus' and is a soft/personal attribute rather than a named technology — omitted from the skills list.
The role is described as hybrid (Chicago area implied by company HQ and 'hybrid environment' language); it is not fully remote.
Read the full posting
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