Sr. Backend Architect / Engineer ? Node.js, AWS, APIs & Postgres req; ROR, fintech a +
KORE1 Technologies
Austin, TX(remote)
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JOB DETAILS
SALARY
$170,000–$220,000 Per Year
SKILLS
Accounting, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Application Programming Interface (API), Architectural Services, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Authentication, Banking Services, Cloud Computing, Code Reviews, Communication Skills, Computer Programming, Computer Science, Continuous Deployment/Delivery, Continuous Integration, Conversation Engine, Customer/Client Research, Data Modeling, Debugging Skills, Docker, Ecosystems, Engineering, Establish Priorities, Finance, Financial Services, Fund Management, GraphQL, JavaScript, Machine Tool, Messaging Middleware, Metrics, Network Security, Node.js, Performance Tuning/Optimization, PostgreSQL, Product Development, Product Engineering, Product Programs, Production Systems, Programming Tools, Prototyping, Redis, Release Management/Engineering, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), Safety Standards, Secure/SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Software Engineering, Standards Development, Startup, Structured Data, Technical Recruiting, Technical Support, Technical/Engineering Design, Test Automation, Testing, Use Cases, User Interface/Experience (UI/UX), Workflow Analysis
LOCATION
Austin, TX
POSTED
Today
Location: Preference is for candidates to work onsite 2-3 days/week in Austin, TX or New York, NY. However, we are open to exceptional fully remote candidates working Central Time hours.
KORE1, a nationwide provider of staffing and recruiting solutions, has an immediate opening for a Sr. Backend Architect / Engineer ? Node.js, AWS, APIs & Postgres req; ROR, fintech a +
About the company:
We are building a modern financial infrastructure focused on simplifying complex payment workflows across a large, underserved ecosystem with significant operational friction today.
The platform streamlines the way institutions, enterprises, and third-party organizations exchange and manage funds, with a long-term vision to become a foundational infrastructure layer for a highly fragmented industry.
Highlights include:
The platform streamlines the way institutions, enterprises, and third-party organizations exchange and manage funds, with a long-term vision to become a foundational infrastructure layer for a highly fragmented industry.
Highlights include:
- Built a highly connected payments/banking platform within a traditionally outdated space
- Supporting large-scale institutional and enterprise payment workflows nationwide
- Processing tens of millions in transaction volume across a rapidly expanding network
- Backed by experienced fintech investors and operators from several well-known financial technology companies
- Operating in a high-growth environment with strong long-term market potential
About the Team
We like to think we are an ambitious, creative, and fun group all brought together through a shared mission.
We extreme take pride in meeting and exceeding the set of standards we defined as a team:
- We obsess over crafting quality products and infrastructure
- We collaborate without ego
- We aim to raise the bar for our industry, users and team members every day
- We continuously enhance our payments network
- We are compassionately direct with each other and our partners
- We are blameless and accountable - a powerful combination
- Importantly, we have fun doing it.
The Role
We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to own and evolve the core systems that power - our payment engine, platform APIs, and the infrastructure underneath it all. You'll work directly with our founders and a tight engineering team to make critical technical decisions every week.
This isn't a "take tickets off the board" role. You'll shape what we build, how we build it, and how we scale it.
What you'll own and work on
We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to own and evolve the core systems that power - our payment engine, platform APIs, and the infrastructure underneath it all. You'll work directly with our founders and a tight engineering team to make critical technical decisions every week.
This isn't a "take tickets off the board" role. You'll shape what we build, how we build it, and how we scale it.
What you'll own and work on
- Architect a modern financial infrastructure for external payments in Higher Education (seriously - everything is paper check today. You will build greenfield infra).
- Build and maintain critical infrastructure: payments, storage, networking, security, and observability systems
- Own core banking infrastructure, including direct integrations with the Federal Reserve and real-time payment networks
- Design and implement CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, and release engineering workflows
- Improve system resiliency and availability through better monitoring, testing, and automation
- Lead platform initiatives like integrations, authentication, AI tooling, new products etc.
- Optimize performance, reliability, and correctness across our systems
- Uphold the highest standards for system safety, especially in a regulated, mission-critical environment
What We're Looking For
You'll thrive here if these describe how you already work:
You'll thrive here if these describe how you already work:
- Builder mentality: Strong opinions, weakly held. You default to shipping the smallest thing that works, then iterate fast. You'd rather have something in production learning from real usage than a perfect design doc collecting comments.
- Ownership > tasks: You proactively unblock yourself and others.. When something is unclear or broken, you prototype, reach out directly, pair, or just ship a pragmatic solution.
- Product-minded: You obsess over the "why" behind features. You dig into customer data and measure success in revenue and user love.
AI-native: You already use Cursor, Claude, Junie, or similar every day. You treat AI as a pair programmer - not a novelty, but also not a replacement. - Start-to-finish ownership: You love owning projects end-to-end, and always implement monitoring, set up alerting, watch the metrics, and make sure it accomplishes objectives.
- User-first: Every product decision should be made with the end user in mind. You build products that are a pleasure to use.
- Growth-driven: You're dedicated to your own growth and have the drive to continuously learn. You actively seek feedback and push yourself into uncomfortable territory.
- Customer-comfortable: You can talk to and work with customers of any kind - student families, university business offices, merchants - and put yourself in their shoes.
Your Experience
We recognize that not everyone will meet all of the criteria. If you meet most of the criteria below and you're excited about the opportunity and willing to learn, we'd love to hear from you.
We recognize that not everyone will meet all of the criteria. If you meet most of the criteria below and you're excited about the opportunity and willing to learn, we'd love to hear from you.
- Bachelor degree in Computer Science preferred; otherwise formal computer science education is required
- Start up and enterprise experience
- Strong architectural thinking with ability to balance immediate delivery vs long-term scalability/maintainability tradeoffs
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years at a senior level, with a strong backend and product engineering background.
- Production experience with TypeScript/JavaScript and Node.js is required.
- Ruby/Rails experience strongly preferred OR demonstrated ability to work effectively across multiple backend languages/frameworks
- Strong experience building and scaling backend systems, including APIs (Rest), third-party integrations, data models, background jobs, and production services.
- Advanced working knowledge of Postgres and Redis.
- Experience owning systems end-to-end: technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
- Experience operating in startup or high-growth environments with ambiguity, high autonomy, and strong ownership expectations
- Strong architectural thinking with the ability to balance short-term execution vs long-term scalability/maintainability tradeoffs
- Strong AWS/cloud infrastructure experience including deployments, debugging, observability, CI/CD, and infrastructure ownership within production environments
- Strong engineering fundamentals with emphasis on clean, maintainable, well-tested code and sound review/validation practices
- Comfortable leveraging AI-assisted development tools responsibly while maintaining strong engineering judgment
- Strong communication, prioritization, and project ownership skills, especially in a remote or hybrid team environment.
Nice to Haves
- Fintech, payments, banking infrastructure, ACH, money movement, or financial services experience
- Product-minded engineer capable of understanding complex business workflows, financial/payment processes, and customer use cases
- Experience building greenfield platforms/applications from scratch
- Experience across both larger technology organizations and startup/high-growth environments
- Ruby on Rails experience
- Experience with GraphQL
- Experience integrating with legacy technologies/protocols such as SOAP or SFTP
- Experience with Terraform, Docker, Sidekiq, Sentry, messaging queues, and Infrastructure-as-Code
- Exposure to AI/ML product initiatives, OCR/document processing, chatbots, or unstructured-to-structured data workflows
- React/front-end exposure is a plus
Our Tech Stack
Backend: Node.js, Postgres, Redis, Rails, Sidekiq
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Terraform, CI/CD
Front-end: TypeScript/JavaScript, React
AI: Cursor and Claude, daily
Security: AES-256 Encryption
Backend: Node.js, Postgres, Redis, Rails, Sidekiq
Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Terraform, CI/CD
Front-end: TypeScript/JavaScript, React
AI: Cursor and Claude, daily
Security: AES-256 Encryption
Compensation depends on experience but is typically $170-220K plus equity
Interview Process
We value transparency. Here is what you can expect:
We value transparency. Here is what you can expect:
- Initial interview with the hiring manager or one of our co-founders (30-45 mins)
- Second interview with one of our co-founders (CEO/COO) or Staff Engineers (30-45 mins)
- Coding assessment - JavaScript/TypeScript + SQL (take-home or virtual, ~60 mins)
- Virtual onsite (or in-person), including:
- Technical interviews (coding and system design)
- Meeting the rest of the team
- Reference calls (we'll ask for 2 references with at least one being a direct manager)
Accommodations
We are committed to providing an accessible interview process. If you need any accommodations at any point, please let us know, and we'll work with you.
ABOUT KORE1
Specializing in professional and technical recruiting, KORE1 is committed to supporting top IT, Engineering, Creative, Scientific, Accounting and Finance professionals in their career paths. We build deep relationships with leading companies, connecting them to exceptional talent every day. With extensive industry expertise and unmatched opportunities, our goal is to provide a unique experience for our contractors and consultants as they prepare for their next role. We are passionate about matching the right people with the right companies.
Specializing in professional and technical recruiting, KORE1 is committed to supporting top IT, Engineering, Creative, Scientific, Accounting and Finance professionals in their career paths. We build deep relationships with leading companies, connecting them to exceptional talent every day. With extensive industry expertise and unmatched opportunities, our goal is to provide a unique experience for our contractors and consultants as they prepare for their next role. We are passionate about matching the right people with the right companies.
Kore1 provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Kore1 complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Kore1 expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of Kore1's employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge.
About the Company
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