Senior Backend Engineer (Java)

Our client is a Series C FinTech company powering payments infrastructure for over 5,000 small and mid-market businesses across North America. They process more than $4B in annual payment volume and are growing engineering by 40% in 2026. They're hiring a remote Senior Backend Engineer to join their Payments Platform team — a six-person crew responsible for the core ledger, transaction routing, and reconciliation services that underpin every product in the company.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, ship, and operate Java 21 / Spring Boot 3 services in the Payments Platform domain (ledger, routing, reconciliation, settlement)
• Own one or two services end-to-end including their PostgreSQL schemas, Kafka topics, dashboards, alerts, and runbooks
• Write detailed RFCs for medium-sized features and lead architecture review discussions across the platform team
• Lead implementation of idempotent, exactly-once payment workflows with strong audit trails and PCI-friendly logging
• Pair with the SRE team on performance work — index tuning, query plans, JVM tuning, async patterns — to keep p99 under 250ms
• Improve test coverage and CI reliability; introduce contract tests for cross-service boundaries
• Participate in a light, business-hours-only on-call rotation and contribute to post-incident reviews
• Mentor 2-3 mid-level engineers via code review, pairing, and design feedback

Requirements

• 6+ years building production backend services in Java (Java 17 or newer preferred)
• Deep, hands-on Spring Boot experience including testing patterns, security, and observability
• Strong PostgreSQL: schema design, query plans, indexing, transactions and isolation levels
• Production experience with at least one event-streaming platform (Kafka strongly preferred)
• Comfort with AWS services in production (ECS or EKS, RDS, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch)
• Track record shipping financial, payments, or other regulated systems with idempotency and audit requirements
• Strong written communication for distributed, async, RFC-heavy collaboration
• Bachelor's in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience

Benefits

• Base salary $145,000-$190,000 plus annual performance bonus targeting 10-15% of base
• Meaningful equity grant with 4-year vesting and one-year cliff
• 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision premiums for the employee
• 401(k) with 4% match and immediate vesting
• $2,500 annual learning and conference stipend (books, courses, conferences)
• $1,500 one-time home office setup stipend plus $100/month ongoing internet reimbursement
• Unlimited PTO with a 15-day minimum policy plus 12 paid company holidays