Senior Backend Developer – RiskAI Pilot

Youth Innovation Lab (YI-Lab) is a not-for-profit civic tech company that works at the intersection of emerging cutting-edge technological tools and their applications by equipping young professionals to solve emerging challenges in our community. YI-Lab’s mission statement is, ‘to engage young people to bridge science to people and policy through innovation’. YI-Lab harnesses indigenous knowledge, citizen science approach, develops low-cost technological solutions, promotes open data, promotes entrepreneurship, and conducts evidence-based advocacy campaigns. YI-Lab provides a conducive environment for young people to co-create solutions for inclusive development.

About the project 
RiskAI (Beta1.0) is an agentic, AI-powered climate and disaster risk intelligence platform designed to translate complex hazard, climate, and disaster data into localized, actionable insights for decision-makers, schools, and communities in Nepal. Built as the country’s first modular RiskAI architecture, the platform integrates existing national and global datasets such as historical disaster records, hazard maps, and climate data and presents them through role-based, user-friendly outputs.

YI-Lab invites dynamic and enthusiastic Nepali citizens to apply for the following position. 

Role Summary

The Senior Backend Developer will be responsible for building, integrating, and maintaining backend systems for the RiskAI platform. The role ensures reliable data flows, AI service integration, and scalable APIs to support disaster risk communication and decision-making use cases.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

1. Backend Development & Integration

·       Develop and maintain backend services and APIs for the RiskAI platform.

·       Implement integration with the BIPAD Portal API and other external data sources.

·       Support ingestion, processing, and querying of historical disaster datasets.

2. AI & Knowledge Systems

·       Integrate vector databases and structured knowledge bases.

·       Support AI agents for document interpretation and tailored content generation.

·       Implement citizen-science feedback and data input mechanisms.

3. Performance, Security & Scalability

·       Optimize backend performance, reliability, and scalability.

·       Implement authentication, authorization, and data protection best practices.

·       Support cloud deployment, containerization, and CI/CD pipelines.

4. Agile Delivery & Documentation

·       Participate actively in sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives.

·       Document backend systems, APIs, and technical processes.

·       Collaborate closely with the Tech Lead and multidisciplinary teams.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Experience

·       Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience).

·       Minimum 5 years of professional backend development experience.

·       Strong experience developing RESTful or GraphQL APIs.

·       Proven experience integrating third-party APIs and data services.

·       Experience working with both SQL and NoSQL databases.

·       Prior exposure to AI-enabled or data-intensive platforms is preferred.

·       Experience in agile or sprint-based delivery environments.

·       Proficiency in backend languages such as Python, Node.js, or Java.

·       Experience integrating AI/ML services (LLMs, NLP services, or custom ML models).

·       Hands-on experience with vector databases or advanced search systems is an advantage.

·       Familiarity with cloud deployment, Docker, and CI/CD pipelines.

·       Strong understanding of backend security and data protection practices.