Staff Backend Engineer
About The Position
Astra is a high-impact engineering team building mission-critical financial infrastructure. Our fintech platform powers payment processing, fraud detection, and financial compliance for businesses handling 100M+ in weekly transaction volume. We maintain 99.9%+ uptime, process complex cross-border payments, and coordinate with multiple third-party financial services while meeting strict regulatory requirements. We're looking for a Senior/Staff Backend Engineer to architect and build complex financial systems that process millions of dollars daily. You'll be one of our core engineers designing cross-domain solutions that coordinate payments, fraud detection, compliance, and user management across our distributed microservices architecture. This role requires deep systems thinking, technical leadership, and the ability to solve complex engineering challenges that span multiple domains and external integrations.
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building complex, production systems
- 3+ years of technical leadership experience (mentoring, architecture decisions, cross-team coordination)
- Demonstrated systems engineering experience solving complex, cross-domain challenges
- Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and computer science fundamentals
- Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices
- Python (we use Python 3), strong understanding of web frameworks and APIs
- Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases
- Google Cloud Platform, or similar cloud platforms
- Domain-driven design, clean architecture, CQRS
- Ability to design systems that balance performance, maintainability, and business requirements
Nice To Haves
- Payment processing, fraud detection, or compliance systems
- Understanding of AML, KYC, PCI DSS, or similar regulations
- Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems
- Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes
- Experience coordinating multiple external service integrations
Responsibilities
- Architect Critical Financial Systems: Design and implement payment processing, fraud detection, and compliance systems that handle millions of dollars daily with strict regulatory requirements
- Lead Cross-Domain Solutions: Coordinate complex interactions between payments, fraud detection, user management, and compliance systems
- Drive Technical Decisions: Lead architecture decisions that impact our entire platform and establish best practices for a growing team
- Mentor Engineers: Guide junior engineers and establish coding standards, design patterns, and engineering practices
- Optimize System Performance: Improve reliability and performance across our distributed microservices architecture
- Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with product and compliance teams to design systems that meet business and regulatory requirements
Benefits
- Competitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company
- Remote-first culture with flexible working arrangements
- Professional growth - lead technical decisions and mentor team members
- Modern tech stack - work with cutting-edge cloud technologies
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
