Senior/Staff Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Early-Stage Fintech Startup
Office Type: Onsite
Salary: $200,000–$450,000 Cash Compensation

Company Description

We’re representing an early-stage fintech company building a global consumer neobank that combines international banking and payments into a single product. The company’s mission is to give customers around the world a seamless way to spend, save, and earn in U.S. dollars.

The company is being built by a small, senior engineering and operating team whose members have previously founded, built, and owned products used by hundreds of millions of people and generating billions of dollars in revenue. With major distribution partners already in place, the team is focused on building the financial infrastructure required to launch in the U.S. and select international markets before expanding globally.

This is a highly technical, high-ownership environment with minimal organizational layers. Engineers work directly with the founders, ship product, and have significant influence over the company's technical direction.

What You Will Do

• Lead development of the core backend systems powering the company's consumer banking product.
• Build and maintain the REST APIs supporting iOS, Android, and web applications.
• Design reliable systems responsible for handling real money, payments, and financial transactions at scale.
• Integrate with external banking, cryptocurrency wallet, authentication, ledger, and payment-rail providers.
• Build primarily in Python and FastAPI, with PostgreSQL and Redis supporting the core application.
• Design and optimize data models, database queries, caching strategies, and backend application architecture.
• Build and operate production systems on AWS.
• Identify areas where services should be separated from the core Python application for performance or scalability.
• Potentially introduce Go or Rust for performance-sensitive services.
• Establish engineering standards around reliability, security, performance, and maintainability.
• Work directly with the technical founders on architecture and long-term technical strategy.
• Own major areas of the product and infrastructure from initial design through production.
• Help establish the engineering foundation required to scale a global financial product.
• Potentially grow into a backend or broader engineering leadership role as the team expands.

Ideal Background

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping production web applications.
• Strong backend engineering experience with Python, Go, or Rust.
• Particularly strong fit for engineers with production Python experience.
• Experience designing and building APIs and backend services used by real customers.
• Strong understanding of PostgreSQL, Redis, AWS, and modern backend infrastructure.
• Experience designing systems where reliability, correctness, performance, and security are critical.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals across system design, APIs, databases, debugging, and production operations.
• Comfortable integrating with complex third-party APIs and external infrastructure providers.
• Able to independently own technically complex systems from architecture through deployment.
• Comfortable operating on a small, senior team with limited process or organizational overhead.
• Interested in remaining deeply hands-on while helping establish technical standards and direction.
• Comfortable working onsite in San Francisco.

Preferred

• Previous experience in fintech, banking, payments, cryptocurrency, or consumer financial services.
• Experience building systems that move or account for real money.
• Familiarity with ledgers, payment rails, banking integrations, wallets, or financial transaction systems.
• Strong production experience with FastAPI.
• Experience with both Python and a systems-oriented language such as Go or Rust.
• Full-stack engineering ability and willingness to contribute outside the backend when necessary.
• Experience building consumer-facing products at significant scale.
• Background at an early-stage startup or similarly high-ownership engineering environment.
• Experience helping establish architecture and engineering standards from an early stage.
• Interest in potentially growing into a technical lead or engineering leadership position as the organization scales.

Compensation and Benefits

• Cash compensation: $200,000–$450,000 for this Senior-level opening.
• The source listing indicates no equity for this position.
• Location: San Francisco, CA.
• Office: Onsite.
• Relocation is available.
• Visa sponsorship is available.
• Full-time position.
• Core stack includes Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Redis, and AWS, with potential use of Go and Rust.
• Small, senior-only engineering organization with direct access to the technical founders.
• Significant ownership over core product and infrastructure decisions.
• Opportunity to help define the technical architecture of a global consumer financial product from an early stage.
• Potential path toward backend or broader engineering leadership as the company scales.