Backend Software Engineer

Self Financial•Austin, TX

14h•$105,000 - $130,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Self Financial is a venture-backed FinTech company focused on increasing economic inclusion and financial resilience by helping people build credit and savings. This position is on the Credit Card team, which builds and supports systems behind Self’s credit card products. The role helps build and maintain the services and APIs that power the credit card experience across the company’s mobile app and web platforms, including integrations with third-party partners and platforms. Interviews are conducted in person at the Austin, Texas headquarters. The engineer will contribute to backend services and APIs, develop skills in distributed systems and scalability, and ship reliable, secure, high-quality software in a fast-paced, collaborative environment with frequent releases. The role is suited to someone with a solid backend foundation who is interested in expanding their skills and taking on greater ownership over time. The position is hybrid. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or current green card holders; visa sponsorship is not available. Employment is conditional on successfully passing a background check.

Requirements

At least 2 years of professional software engineering experience, including work on backend services.
Working knowledge of Python and a solid grasp of web application fundamentals.
Understanding of REST APIs and how backend services communicate with clients and other systems.
Comfort with Git and common software development workflows, including code review and collaborative development.
Commitment to writing reliable, tested, secure, and maintainable code.
Clear communication skills, ability to manage own tasks, and willingness to ask for help when needed.
Must be a U.S. citizen or current green card holder; visa sponsorship is not available.
Must successfully pass a background check.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Flask or FastAPI.
Knowledge of the credit card or payments industry.
Experience integrating with third-party APIs or external partner systems.
Experience using agentic engineering tools such as Claude, OpenAI/Codex, or Copilot to speed up development workflows.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience with SQL and relational database design.
Exposure to cloud platforms, preferably AWS, containers such as Docker, or message queues.
Curiosity and a track record of picking up new technologies quickly.
Personal, professional, or open-source projects demonstrating backend skills.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain backend services and APIs using Python, Flask, and FastAPI, taking on greater ownership over time.
Implement REST endpoints consumed by web and mobile clients, with attention to scalability and long-term maintainability.
Work with PostgreSQL and MySQL to model data, write efficient queries, and contribute to schema and indexing decisions.
Build and support third-party partner and service integrations, including data exchange, error handling, and monitoring.
Write clean, maintainable code and participate in code reviews, applying reviewer feedback.
Follow and help uphold best practices for testing, security, performance, and safe releases.
Collaborate with Product, Design, Frontend Engineering, QA, and the engineering manager to scope and ship user-focused improvements.
Debug issues, explore unfamiliar parts of the codebase, and develop an understanding of Self’s backend architecture.
Contribute to team rituals, documentation, and continuous improvement.