Lead Backend Developer

Valiant Finance; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-friendly

Dog-friendly office

8 weeks parental leave

Hybrid working model

Team events

Job summary

Valiant Finance seeks a Backend Team Lead (Ruby on Rails) to guide a squad building the lending marketplace and embedded finance products. This hands-on leadership role blends architecture decisions with mentoring, ensuring code quality while shaping standards and delivery across regions.

You will partner with Product, own growth and delivery, and lead efforts on security, compliance, and scalable cloud infrastructure.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of commercial Ruby on Rails development experience.
• Proven track record leading a backend squad in a fast-paced tech environment.
• Strong background in distributed systems and PostgreSQL schemas.
• AWS or similar cloud infra management via CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with testing frameworks (RSpec) and secure coding practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and level up engineers through 1:1s and career paths.
• Enforce best practices across testing, code reviews, docs, and CI/CD.
• Shape team adoption of AI-assisted development with quality controls.
• Foster an inclusive, high-performing culture with psychological safety.
• Architect, build, and maintain scalable RESTful APIs powering products.
• Design resilient integrations with Salesforce, Auth0, Cloudflare, etc.
• Own and optimise cloud infrastructure across regions; ensure data consistency.
• Lead SOC2/GDPR security/compliance work with security team.
• Set standards for clean architecture and test coverage across domains.
• Collaborate with Product to translate strategy into roadmaps and epics.
• Balance rapid feature delivery with platform health and debt reduction.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

Team leadership

System architecture

DevOps

Testing (RSpec)

Security & compliance

Communication

AWS

PostgreSQL

CI/CD tools

Tools

AWS

PostgreSQL

CI/CD tools

Job description

We're hiring a Backend Team Lead (Ruby on Rails) to lead and grow one of our core engineering squads.

Valiant Finance is an award-winning FinTech startup on a mission to simplify business lending. Our cloud-based platform helps thousands of Australian small businesses compare and apply for loans from over 80 of the country's leading lenders. Our platform doesn't just power our own services – it also drives the commercial lending capabilities for some of the world's most recognised brands.

Our global Enterprise technology arm provides embedded finance infrastructure to equipment vendors, manufacturers and funding partners. We pride ourselves on building and delivering category-leading tech products across the US, Australia and the UK for top-tier global businesses.

We have a strong growth agenda and are always looking for top talent to join the pursuit of our vision to unleash the economic potential of every idea!

About the Role

We're looking for a Backend Team Lead to lead a squad of engineers building the platform behind our lending marketplace and Enterprise embedded finance products. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll own your team's growth, delivery and engineering standards, while staying close to the code as the senior Rails voice on architecture and design decisions.

What You'll Be Doing

People Leadership:

• Lead, coach, and level up other engineers through regular 1:1s, structured career paths, and technical guidance.
• Establish and enforce best practices across testing, code reviews, documentation, and automated CI/CD deployment pipelines.
• Shape how the team uses AI-assisted development, and keep AI-assisted work to the same quality standard as all other work.
• Foster an inclusive, high-performing engineering culture grounded in psychological safety and continuous learning.

Architecture & Engineering:

• Architect, build, and maintain highly scalable, secure, and resilient public/private RESTful APIs powering our core product and enterprise partners.
• Design resilient integrations with third-party systems (Salesforce, Auth0, Cloudflare and more) that protect platform stability and data consistency.
• Own and optimise our cloud infrastructure and high-volume data architecture across multiple regions.
• Help lead our engineering compliance work (SOC2, GDPR) alongside our security team.
• Set the benchmark for clean architecture, domain-driven design, and comprehensive test coverage while modernising legacy domains and instilling long-term maintainability standards across the team.

Delivery & Collaboration:

• Partner directly with Product Leadership to translate commercial strategy into technical roadmaps, weigh trade-offs, and decompose complex epics into clear execution phases.
• Balance rapid feature delivery ('Get S#!t Done') with long-term platform health, architecture scaling, and technical debt reduction.
• Structure and optimise team workflows using Linear/Jira/similar to maintain backlog hygiene, measure velocity, and establish clear, predictable delivery rhythms.

Required Experience

• Core Stack: 7+ years of commercial Ruby on Rails development experience.
• Team Leadership: Proven track record leading a squad of backend engineers in a fast-paced tech or scale-up environment, including 1:1s, performance conversations and hiring.
• System Architecture: Strong background designing distributed systems, asynchronous processing workflows (Sidekiq), and complex PostgreSQL schemas.
• DevOps & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience managing and deploying cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS or Heroku) via CI/CD pipelines.
• Testing & Quality: Deep familiarity with testing frameworks like RSpec and modern automated deployment strategies.
• Security & Compliance: Solid understanding of application security principles, API authentication, and secure coding practices (e.g., OWASP).
• Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical decisions for business stakeholders.

Bonus Points

• Experience in high-volume production environments with strict availability SLAs.
• Knowledge of the financial services industry (lending or corporate finance).
• Experience navigating GDPR and/or SOC2 compliance frameworks.
• Experience with Salesforce or CRM data integration.
• Experience with multi-region platforms.

Benefits & Culture

We're a remote-friendly team, but if you prefer an office environment, our Surry Hills space is open, dog-friendly, and empowering. We foster a culture where innovation is recognised and rewarded.

• Embrace your need for work-life balance with our hybrid working model
• Celebrate the joy of starting a family with 8 weeks of paid parental leave
• Bring your furry friend to hang out in our brand new, dog-friendly office
• Company-wide events designed to honour and celebrate all the outstanding achievements of our amazing team

Most importantly, we're looking for someone who is ready to embody our core values:

• "Get S#!t Done"
• Thrive in the Pride
• Be customer champions