Astra
Staff Backend Engineer
New York - Remote OK (US Only) · Staff+
Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 48 days ago
PythonDistributed SystemsBackend DevelopmentData StructuresAlgorithmsSQLNoSQLGCPCloud PlatformsComplianceDesign SystemsSystems EngineeringLeadershipCollaborationMentoring
About the role
- 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.
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
- 8+ years of software engineering experience building complex, production systems
- Professional growth - lead technical decisions and mentor team members
- Mission-driven - build systems that power financial innovation
Requirements
- 3+ years of technical leadership experience (mentoring, architecture decisions, cross-team coordination)
- Demonstrated systems engineering experience solving complex, cross-domain challenges
- Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required
- Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases
- Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems
- Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes
- This role requires deep systems thinking, technical leadership, and the ability to solve complex engineering challenges that span multiple domains and external integrations.
Nice to have
- Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering from an accredited university highly preferred
Skills
- Backend Development: Python (we use Python 3), strong understanding of web frameworks and APIs
- Database Design: Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases
- Cloud Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform, or similar cloud platforms
- Architecture Patterns: Domain-driven design, clean architecture, CQRS
- Preferred Experience
- Financial Systems: Payment processing, fraud detection, or compliance systems
- Financial Regulations: Understanding of AML, KYC, PCI DSS, or similar regulations
- Banking Integrations: Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems
- High-Scale Systems: Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes
- Third-Party Integrations: Experience coordinating multiple external service integrations
- Complex Problems: Work on sophisticated challenges that few engineers get to solve
- Python (we use Python 3), strong understanding of web frameworks and APIs
Compensation
- Competitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company
Benefits
- Competitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company
- Remote-first culture with flexible working arrangements
Company info
- Astra is a high-impact engineering team building mission-critical financial infrastructure.
- We're looking for engineers who are excited by complex systems problems and have the educational background and experience to handle sophisticated challenges.
Equal opportunity
- equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.
This listing is sourced directly from Astra's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.