Senior Backend Engineer - Grant Underwriting and Payment

About the role

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join our Grant Core team. You will be responsible for scaling our critical systems that power underwriting decisions, payment processing, and collection strategies.

Responsibilities

• Own and scale our multi-rail payment systems (ACH, RTP, card networks) to handle transaction volume while maintaining 99.99% reliability
• Design and build scalable backend services that can handle millions of transactions with low latency and high throughput
• Optimize our Sidekiq job infrastructure to efficiently process complex workflows for underwriting, collections, and payment distribution
• Lead architectural decisions for our core financial systems, balancing speed, reliability, and cost as we scale
• Build robust data pipelines that power our ML models and real-time decision engines
• Work closely with our product and data science teams to ship features that directly impact our customers' financial wellbeing

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience with modern backend frameworks
• Strong systems design skills - you've architected and shipped distributed systems that handle high throughput and maintain data consistency
• Production experience with background job processing systems (Sidekiq, Resque, or similar)
• Solid understanding of database optimization, caching strategies, and performance tuning
• Ideal Candidate Also Has Experience with payment systems, financial infrastructure, or regulated environments (ACH, card processing, real-time payments)
• Track record of making infrastructure decisions that balance technical excellence with business pragmatism
• Experience working with ML/data science teams to productionize models and algorithms
• Background in fintech, payments, or lending infrastructure
• Strong system observability mindset (metrics, logging, tracing, monitoring)
• Technical Leadership: Ability to own complex technical initiatives end-to-end, from design through implementation and rollout
• Mentorship: Help level up the team through code reviews, design docs, and technical guidance
• Impact Focus: Balance technical perfection with pragmatic delivery - you know when to build for scale vs. ship fast
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner effectively with product, data science, and operations to deliver customer value
• Operational Excellence: Take ownership of the reliability and performance of the systems you build

Qualifications

• Experience with payment systems, financial infrastructure, or regulated environments (ACH, card processing, real-time payments)
• Track record of making infrastructure decisions that balance technical excellence with business pragmatism
• Experience working with ML/data science teams to productionize models and algorithms
• Background in fintech, payments, or lending infrastructure
• Strong system observability mindset (metrics, logging, tracing, monitoring)
• Technical Leadership: Ability to own complex technical initiatives end-to-end, from design through implementation and rollout
• Mentorship: Help level up the team through code reviews, design docs, and technical guidance
• Impact Focus: Balance technical perfection with pragmatic delivery - you know when to build for scale vs. ship fast
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner effectively with product, data science, and operations to deliver customer value
• Operational Excellence: Take ownership of the reliability and performance of the systems you build

Skills

• Modern backend frameworks
• Distributed systems
• Background job processing systems (Sidekiq, Resque, or similar)
• Database optimization, caching strategies, and performance tuning
• Payment systems, financial infrastructure, or regulated environments (ACH, card processing, real-time payments)
• ML/data science teams
• Fintech, payments, or lending infrastructure
• System observability (metrics, logging, tracing, monitoring)
• Technical leadership
• Mentorship
• Impact focus
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Operational excellence

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package including base salary range of $244,000 - $292,000 USD
• Health insurance benefits
• Retirement savings plan
• Flexible work schedule
• Professional development opportunities

Pay

• Base salary range of $244,000 - $292,000 USD

Schedule

• Full-time position

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Kikoff Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class. Please reference the following for more information.