Principal Backend Engineer — Lead Push & Open Banking

Avara; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Aave Labs in London is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to lead the engineering team behind Push, its regulated, non-custodial on-ramp/off-ramp.

This senior role spans systems connecting banking partners, identity and compliance controls, payment processing, blockchain settlement, and customer wallets. You will set technical direction, ensure auditability, and deliver safely at pace.

Qualifications

• Senior backend engineering experience with production systems.
• Leadership of engineering teams and mentorship.
• Experience designing distributed, event-driven systems handling real money.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction and architecture for Push backend services and onchain settlement.
• Translate regulatory and product requirements into a clear engineering roadmap.
• Design and build resilient backend services for on-ramp/off-ramp lifecycles and notifications.
• Lead integrations with open-banking, payments, identity, compliance, and blockchain providers.
• Define secure boundaries between fiat systems, non-custodial wallets, and onchain execution.
• Maintain secure development standards, architecture reviews, testing, and on-call ownership.
• Remain hands-on in code for high-risk changes and complex production issues.

Skills

Backend engineering

Technical leadership

Event-driven systems

Regulated fintech

Rust

Go/Java/C++

API design

PostgreSQL

Messaging systems

Systems architecture

Tools

Rust tooling

Distributed services tooling

Job description

Aave Labs in London is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to lead the engineering team behind Push, its regulated, non-custodial on-ramp/off-ramp.

This senior role spans systems connecting banking partners, identity and compliance controls, payment processing, blockchain settlement, and customer wallets. You will set technical direction, ensure auditability, and deliver safely at pace.