Backend Engineer - Platform Engineering

Why PayNet / Why Now

• Strengthen backend platforms critical to onboarding participants into Malaysia's payment ecosystem
• Scale and stabilize systems as onboarding volumes, complexity, and integration demands increase
• Reduce long-term operational and performance risk through better backend architecture and design
• Own backend decisions that directly affect platform reliability, security, and partner experience

TL;DR

• Design and own backend services that underpin critical participant onboarding platforms
• Build scalable, secure, and high-performance systems used at national scale
• Operate as a self-directed technical owner - identify problems, propose solutions, and drive them to production with minimal handholding
• Set the code review bar and technical delivery standards for the team
• Actively coach junior engineers through their day-to-day work, not just in passing

Why This Role Matters

• Backend systems directly impact the reliability and scalability of national payment onboarding
• Poor architectural decisions create long-term operational risk and rework
• Senior engineers set the technical bar for quality, performance, and security
• Strong backend ownership enables faster delivery without compromising stability
• A senior who can operate independently frees leads/architects to focus on cross-team and strategic problems

What You Will Actually Do

Ownership & Solutioning

• Take a problem statement (not a spec) and independently research, propose, and defend a technical solution - including trade-off analysis, not just implementation
• Design and lead architecture for scalable, high-performance backend systems, from first principles where needed
• Own end-to-end delivery: design → build → test → deploy → post-release stability, with minimal supervision once direction is aligned
• Proactively flag architectural or scalability risks before they become production incidents, rather than waiting to be asked

Engineering

• Develop and maintain backend services and RESTful APIs using Java, Golang, or Python
• Design and optimize database schemas and queries to ensure performance and data integrity
• Write unit and integration tests as a default part of delivery, not an afterthought
• Troubleshoot complex production issues and drive root-cause analysis through to permanent fixes

Code Review & Engineering Practices

• Set and enforce code review standards (PR size, test coverage expectations, security checks, documentation)
• Review peers' and juniors' code with a bias toward teaching - explain the "why," not just flag the "what"
• Champion CI/CD, branching, and release discipline appropriate to a national payment system (audit trail, rollback safety, change management)
• Adapt quickly to the team's existing tooling, workflows, and review culture - able to plug into an established process within the first few weeks rather than needing it re-explained repeatedly

Examples of This Role in Practice

• Given only "onboarding is timing out under load," independently profiles the system, identifies the bottleneck, and ships a fix - without needing the root cause pre-diagnosed for them
• Refactoring database queries to remove performance bottlenecks before they're flagged by monitoring
  • Leading code reviews that catch security or reliability issues before merge, and using the review as a teaching moment for the author
  • Owning a critical production incident end-to-end: triage, root cause analysis, fix, and postmortem write-up
  • Spending 3-5 hours a week (not just "when there's time") on pairing or reviewing with junior engineers
  • Adapting within the first sprint or two to the team's existing Git workflow, review cadence, and definition-of-done - asking sharp clarifying questions rather than needing repeated onboarding

What Will Help You Succeed

Required

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience, with strong proficiency in Java/Spring Boot (Golang or Python a plus)
• Proven track record of end-to-end ownership: design, troubleshooting, structured problem analysis, and unit testing
• Proven experience building RESTful APIs and scalable backend systems
• Solid understanding of relational databases, SQL, and performance optimization
• Strong, structured problem-solving ability - can walk through how they diagnose an issue, not just state the fix
• Experience mentoring engineers in a hands-on, ongoing capacity, and working in Agile environments

Helpful

• Experience across multiple backend languages or frameworks (e.g., Golang, Node.js)
• Exposure to microservices and distributed systems architecture (event-driven design, sagas, service boundaries)
• Experience integrating third-party APIs and external services
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
• Knowledge of backend security best practices (authentication, authorization, data protection) especially relevant in a payments context
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and performance tuning tools
• Prior experience in fintech, payments, or other regulated/high-availability environments