Senior Backend Engineer
About The Position
Scotch is building the next-generation operating system for beverage alcohol retailers — combining POS, payments, back office, and e-commerce into a platform purpose-built for liquor stores. We’re modernizing one of the oldest industries in the world: the $1.6T beverage alcohol market. Our platform helps retailers run more efficiently through streamlined payments, inventory management, reporting, and day-to-day operations. Our founders came from Skupos (acquired 2023) and Drizly (acquired by Uber). We've raised $28M from VMG Partners, First Round, Lerer Hippeau, Watchfire, and Toba Capital, with angels including the founder of Drizly and early Toast executives, and in 2026, closed a $20M Series A. Forbes has recognized Scotch as a leader in liquor retail tech. Scotch is hiring an experienced backend-leaning full stack engineer to own features end-to-end across our Rails + Hotwire application — from concept through deployment. This role carries significant technical ownership: data modeling, database performance, and background job architecture on top of standard feature delivery. It's a senior individual contributor role, not a management position, but one with real influence over engineering standards and process.
Requirements
- 4+ years of professional backend web development experience
- Strong proficiency in Ruby or similar language
- Solid understanding of Rails application architecture and server-side patterns
- Experience designing and building RESTful APIs, and working with JSON and other data-exchange formats
- Strong database skills — schema design, query optimization, and migrations (e.g., PostgreSQL)
- Experience with version control (e.g., Git)
- Understanding of secure coding practices and application security
- Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills, with strong communication and collaboration
- Understanding of AI tools and proficiency in applying them (but not during the interview process unless expressly stated)
Nice To Haves
- Experience with POS/commerce systems, payment workflows, payment processing, and gateway integration
- Experience and comfort with the speed and demands of early-stage startups
- Familiarity with background job frameworks and best practices (e.g., GoodJob, Sidekiq)
- Experience with caching, message queues, and third-party API integrations
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and best practices for managing production releases
- Familiarity with Infrastructure (AWS, Heroku)
- Experience with observability and monitoring (logging, metrics, tracing)
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and ship robust full stack features in Rails and Hotwire
- Ownership of the full development lifecycle — concept, design, testing, and deployment
- Own data modeling, database design, and query performance (PostgreSQL)
- Build and maintain background job processing and asynchronous workflows
- Optimize application performance, scalability, and resource utilization
- Partner with cross-functional teams to turn requirements into technical solutions
- Conduct code reviews and uphold coding standards and best practices
- Drive continuous improvement of development processes and workflows
Benefits
- Competitive equity package
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Unlimited flexible PTO
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
