Senior Backend Engineer (+ Equity) at Raya

About the role

Raya is a private membership platform valued at nearly $1B following its Series A3, designed for creators, founders, and cultural leaders. With a team of 110 people, Raya builds technology that fosters real-world human connection and high-quality, in-person interactions for its global community of influential members across its iOS-only social platform.

Why this role is remarkable

• Ownership of the Maps and Location domain for a platform valued at nearly $1B following a successful Series A3 round.
• Unique opportunity to build high-scale geospatial features that directly facilitate real-world human connection and community for world-class creators.
• Exceptional benefits including a $50/day meal stipend, unlimited vacation, and a $1,000 annual travel stipend to explore new parts of the world.

What You Will Do

• Architect and lead the development of Core Discovery services, specifically focusing on geo-indexing, proximity queries, and mapping surfaces.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams of UX designers and data scientists to deliver intuitive, user-focused search and discovery experiences.
• Navigate the full SDLC to ensure operational excellence, implementing CI/CD practices and scalable system designs in a fast-moving environment.

The ideal candidate

• Has 6+ years of backend experience with a proven track record of shipping scalable production systems using Node.js and TypeScript.
• Possesses deep expertise in geospatial data and location-based systems, including experience with geo-indexing and proximity-based queries.
• Demonstrates strong data fundamentals with PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and search infrastructure like Elasticsearch or OpenSearch for consumer-facing products.