Staff Backend Engineer, Astra
+ Equity
Money movement automation platform
Be an early applicant
Money movement automation platform
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
+ Equity
21-100 employees
Company mission
Astra's mission is to power the next-generation of fintech products and services, by enabling its clients to offer seamless, automated bank transfers between their customers’ networks of accounts.
Role
Who you are
- This role requires deep systems thinking, technical leadership, and the ability to solve complex engineering challenges that span multiple domains and external integrations
- 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
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required
- Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering from an accredited university highly preferred
- 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
- System Design: Ability to design systems that balance performance, maintainability, and business requirements
- We're looking for engineers who are excited by complex systems problems and have the educational background and experience to handle sophisticated challenges
- If you're passionate about building mission-critical financial infrastructure and want to have a direct impact on our technical direction, we'd love to hear from you
Desirable
- 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
What the job involves
- 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
- 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
- Direct Impact: You'll be a big part of a small engineering team building systems that power a growing fintech platform
- Architecture Influence: Lead technical decisions that will scale with our business
- Complex Problems: Work on sophisticated challenges that few engineers get to solve
- Team Building: Establish engineering practices and culture from the ground up
- Financial Innovation: Build systems that enable new financial products and services
Our take
Astra is a provider of automated transfer technology solutions for financial institutions, fintech startups, and enterprises. Its instant payments API enables users to process real-time transfers between bank accounts and cards, all from one simple integration, powering capabilities such as automated balance refills, P2P and instant debit card transfers, and much more.
Astra is used to power a range of financial products including Fold, a bitcoin rewards card, and digital wealth management app unifimoney. With the platform, developers can build fast transfer functionality into new or existing apps in a matter of days, enabling them to better serve their customers with smoother onboarding and a quicker money movement experience.
The company has seen significant funding that will support its rapid expansion, with a particular focus on engineering and compliance. It also intends to extend its payment solutions to sizeable enterprises, as well as expanding its embedded payment capabilities with other fintech infrastructure providers.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Oct 2022
$10m
SERIES A
Jun 2021
$2m
SEED
Total funding: $15m
Company benefits
- Remote options
- Intensely collaborative and creative environment
- Opportunity for professional growth
Company HQ
Downtown Menlo Park, Menlo Park, CA
Leadership
Gil Akos
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously co-founded Mode Lab, where they were Director or Technology then Executive Chairman. Former Fellow at On Deck.
Sam Morgan
(Co-Founder & COO)Spent 3 years at Arconic, in roles including R&D Innovation Manager. Was also an Aerospace Marketing Expert and Business Development Specialist at Alcoa.
Zach Nolan
(Co-Founder & CTO)Has worked as Lead Engineer at Stardust Entertainment, and as Senior Software Engineer at Lamps Plus. Was also a Founding Partner at Onyx.
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