Backend Engineer – Data Acquisition
Lighthouse1 month ago
Gent, BelgiumMid Level
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and improve backend data-acquisition systems handling close to 200 million requests per day.
- Develop and maintain the in-house proxy layer and browser tooling, including request routing, connection handling, and protocol-level behavior.
- Investigate difficult crawler problems, test alternative approaches, and turn successful solutions into robust reusable systems.
- Build interfaces and guardrails for reliable use by other teams and AI agents.
- Own code quality, including testing, observability, and maintainability of code written with AI assistance.
- Collaborate with crawler engineers, DevOps, and Security to deliver secure and scalable solutions.
Requirements
- Hands-on experience building, deploying, and running production backend services in a cloud environment.
- Experience with Rust or C/C++, or a strong backend-language background with a desire to develop deep Rust expertise.
- Strong understanding of HTTP, TCP/IP, TLS, and proxies.
- Curiosity about browser and network-stack internals and an R&D-oriented approach to ambiguous problems.
- Strong analytical and debugging skills, including comfort with packet captures, profilers, and reading source code.
- Clear communication, teamwork, openness to feedback, and fluency in English.
Benefits
- Full-time hybrid role based in Ghent, Belgium, with the flexibility to work from home or global offices.
- Flexible time off and autonomy over work-life balance.
- Career development through workshops, tools, training, and processes.
- Mobility budget or company car depending on job category.
- Net allowance for home-office expenses.
- Lunch and eco vouchers.
- Comprehensive health insurance for the employee and dependents.
- Group insurance for pension funding.
- Referral bonuses.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Lighthouse
Lighthouse builds a commercial analytics and pricing platform for hotels and short‑term rentals, combining rate shopping, revenue management, and market intelligence. It sells SaaS subscriptions and data products used to benchmark demand, set prices, and optimize distribution. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Denver, the privately held company rebranded from OTA Insight and serves hospitality brands and independent properties globally.