{"id":14343,"url":"https://alion.io/job/astra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2","title":"Staff Backend Engineer","company":{"id":179341,"name":"Astra Finance","domain":"astrafi.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/astra-3","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":8,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":77,"computed_at":"2026-10-21T05:46:15Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":210000,"max":260000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":260000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Clean Architecture","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"PCI DSS","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-03T17:50:06Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-03","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T20:08:02Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":140,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":139},"description":"About Astra\nAstra is a high-impact engineering team building mission-critical financial infrastructure. Our fintech platform powers payment processing, fraud detection, and financial compliance for businesses handling 100M+ in weekly transaction volume. We maintain 99.9%+ uptime, process complex cross-border payments, and coordinate with multiple third-party financial services while meeting strict regulatory requirements.\nThe Role\nWe'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.\nThis role requires deep systems thinking, technical leadership, and the ability to solve complex engineering challenges that span multiple domains and external integrations.\nWhat You'll Do\nArchitect Critical Financial Systems: Design and implement payment processing, fraud detection, and compliance systems that handle millions of dollars daily with strict regulatory requirements\n\nLead Cross-Domain Solutions: Coordinate complex interactions between payments, fraud detection, user management, and compliance systems\n\nDrive Technical Decisions: Lead architecture decisions that impact our entire platform and establish best practices for a growing team\n\nMentor Engineers: Guide junior engineers and establish coding standards, design patterns, and engineering practices\n\nOptimize System Performance: Improve reliability and performance across our distributed microservices architecture\n\nCollaborate Across Teams: Work closely with product and compliance teams to design systems that meet business and regulatory requirements\n\nWhat We're Looking For\nStaff Backend Engineer Requirements\n8+ years of software engineering experience building complex, production systems\n\n3+ years of technical leadership experience (mentoring, architecture decisions, cross-team coordination)\n\nDemonstrated systems engineering experience solving complex, cross-domain challenges\n\nStrong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and computer science fundamentals\n\nExperience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices\n\nEducation\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required\n\nMaster's degree in Computer Science or Engineering from an accredited university highly preferred\n\nTechnical Skills\nBackend Development: Python (we use Python 3), strong understanding of web frameworks and APIs\n\nDatabase Design: Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases\n\nCloud Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform, or similar cloud platforms\n\nArchitecture Patterns: Domain-driven design, clean architecture, CQRS\n\nSystem Design: Ability to design systems that balance performance, maintainability, and business requirements\n\nPreferred Experience\nFinancial Systems: Payment processing, fraud detection, or compliance systems\n\nFinancial Regulations: Understanding of AML, KYC, PCI DSS, or similar regulations\n\nBanking Integrations: Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems\n\nHigh-Scale Systems: Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes\n\nThird-Party Integrations: Experience coordinating multiple external service integrations\n\nWhy This Role Matters\nDirect Impact: You'll be a big part of a small engineering team building systems that power a growing fintech platform\n\nArchitecture Influence: Lead technical decisions that will scale with our business\n\nComplex Problems: Work on sophisticated challenges that few engineers get to solve\n\nTeam Building: Establish engineering practices and culture from the ground up\n\nFinancial Innovation: Build systems that enable new financial products and services\n\nWhat We Offer\nCompetitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company\n\nRemote-first culture with flexible working arrangements\n\nSmall team, big impact - your work directly shapes our platform\n\nProfessional growth - lead technical decisions and mentor team members\n\nModern tech stack - work with cutting-edge cloud technologies\n\nMission-driven - build systems that power financial innovation\n\nRemote Work and Culture\nAstra is a remote-first company hiring only within the U.S. We value thoughtful collaboration, clarity, and initiative. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.\nHow to Apply\nWe'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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4814,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible schedule"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Financial Software & Embedded Finance","Payment Processing & Gateways"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-06-03T17:50:06Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":22,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.608,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":139,"expected_fill_days":77,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-21T05:46:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":260000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/astra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/astra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-21T21:41:16Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":30890,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":179341},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=179341"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fastra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fastra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fastra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/astra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fastra-finance-staff-backend-engineer-2"}]}