Senior Backend Engineer - Credit Builder Experience

Kikoff • San Francisco, CA

43d • $244,000 - $292,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

At Kikoff, we’re redefining how people build financial confidence, helping millions of Americans establish credit, access smarter financial products, and reach their goals.

As a Senior Backend Engineer on Kikoff’s core credit-building team, you’ll shape the systems that define how our users build and maintain strong credit. You’ll work across the heart of our product experience—scaling the services that power credit actions, subscriptions, credit report processing, financial monitoring, and even drive our AI-driven smart credit coach. Your work will directly influence how millions of users understand, improve, and take control of their credit journey.

In this role, you’ll architect and evolve backend systems that must be highly reliable, intelligent, and adaptive as we grow. You’ll design user-centric credit-building workflows, integrate with major credit bureaus and financial data providers, and help refine the payment and subscription infrastructure that supports our product. You’ll also contribute to the technical foundation of our emerging AI coaching platform, collaborating closely with product and data teams to transform complex credit insights into clear, actionable guidance.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building and scaling production systems.
• Experience with Ruby on Rails is a plus but not required; we value strong fundamentals and the ability to learn quickly.
• Deep understanding of system design, API development, and integrations, especially with third-party platforms or payment providers.
• Comfort working across the stack and collaborating closely with mobile and product engineers.
• Passion for experimentation and optimization, using data and iteration to improve customer outcomes.
• Strong product sense — you care about building the right thing, not just building it right.
• A builder’s mindset — thrives in ambiguity, takes initiative, and enjoys owning systems end-to-end.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with large language models (LLMs), MCP, or AI system architecture is a strong plus — especially experience integrating AI capabilities into user-facing products.
• Experience with payment processing systems, ACH, cards, or other financial transaction flows is a major plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement the backend systems that power Kikoff’s core credit-building experience, including credit actions, subscription flows, credit report processing, financial monitoring, and AI-driven coaching, while ensuring they scale reliably as we grow.
• Own key domains within the credit-building platform, driving architectural decisions and ensuring high reliability, performance, and a seamless user experience.
• Integrate with third-party credit bureaus, financial data providers, and internal services, building robust APIs and data pipelines that ensure accuracy, consistency, and intelligent insights at scale.
• Improve and evolve credit-building workflows through experimentation, iteration, and data-driven optimization to help users achieve stronger credit outcomes.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, data, and mobile partners to design features that simplify complex financial and credit concepts for users.
• Contribute across the stack on user-facing experiences tied to credit actions, subscription management, and related financial features.
• Extend the platform to incorporate external financial and credit data sources, helping users gain a holistic understanding of their financial health.
• Enhance observability and reliability across critical systems, introducing monitoring, alerting, and fault tolerance that support a trustworthy credit-building foundation.
• Support adjacent product areas and shared systems across the engineering team, contributing to Kikoff’s broader financial wellness platform beyond core credit building.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed