Backend / Data Engineer

Affiniti; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Affiniti is building the financial operating system for small businesses across America, and this role places you at the core of reliability and scale. You’ll own the infrastructure, scale Postgres, and build data pipelines that turn messy financial data into trusted reporting.

You’ll operate in NYC (in office) with Canada remote options, collaborating with backend, data, and platform teams to shape architecture that keeps the product up and growing.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of production engineering experience across backend, infrastructure, or data.
• Hands-on infrastructure depth with GCP or similar, Terraform and Kubernetes.
• Experience scaling Postgres in production, including design and performance.
• Real data engineering chops with pipelines and data models.
• A real backend engineer with strong TypeScript and Node.js skills.
• Experience using AI coding assistants to accelerate development without sacrificing judgment.
• High ownership and accountability in shipping features and maintaining reliability.

Responsibilities

• Own the infrastructure our product runs on, including GCP, Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and foundational platform decisions.
• Scale Postgres as the product grows, including schema design, indexing, partitioning, replication, and migrations.
• Build data pipelines turning financial data from partners into clean, trusted data for reporting and reconciliation.
• Contribute backend work when needed, building APIs and tracing issues from database to customer.
• Obsess over data integrity, uptime, failure modes, costs, and edge cases to keep systems reliable.
• Make reliability a habit through monitoring, alerting, and incident response.

Skills

Backend engineering

Infrastructure depth

Data engineering

Ownership

AI tooling in dev

Tools

GCP

Terraform

Kubernetes

Postgres

TypeScript

Node.js

CI/CD

Job description

About This Role

There is an enormous gap between the technology built in Silicon Valley and what the average small business owner in America can actually get their hands on. The pharmacist in rural Louisiana. The auto dealer in the Midwest. The vet clinic owner who has done their books the same way for twenty years. They run the businesses that hold American communities together, and the software serving them has never reflected how much they matter.

Affiniti is closing that gap. We’re building the financial operating system for small businesses across America, and the infrastructure and data underneath it are the foundation. Every pipeline you build, every query you speed up, every system that stays up when it matters is money moving reliably for the people who needed it most and never got it.

If you want to build the systems everything else stands on, this is that opportunity.

Location

• NYC (in office), Canada (remote)

Tech Stack

• TypeScript, Node.js, Postgres, GCP, Terraform, and Kubernetes

Key Responsibilities

• Own the infrastructure our product runs on. GCP, Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and the foundational decisions that determine how the platform scales, deploys, and stays up.

• Scale Postgres as we grow. Schema design, query performance, indexing, partitioning, replication, and migrations that never take the product down.

• Build the data pipelines the business runs on. Turn messy financial data from banking partners, payment systems, and our own product into clean, trusted data for reporting, underwriting, and reconciliation.

• Drop into the backend when it counts. Build APIs, ship features, and trace a bug from the database to the customer without waiting on anyone.

• Obsess over the details that separate systems that work from systems customers can trust: data integrity, uptime, failure modes, cost, and the edge cases most engineers skip.

• Make reliability a habit, not a fire drill. Monitoring, alerting, incident response, and the fixes that stop the same problem from happening twice.

What You’ll Bring

• 3+ years of production engineering experience across backend, infrastructure, or data. Early-stage startup experience strongly preferred.

• Hands-on infrastructure depth. You’ve run production systems on GCP or another major cloud with Terraform and Kubernetes, and you have real opinions about how they should be set up.

• You’ve scaled Postgres in production. You know what breaks as tables, traffic, and transaction volume grow, and how to fix it before customers notice.

• Real data engineering chops. You’ve built pipelines and data models other teams depend on, and you care whether the numbers are right.

• A real backend engineer, too. Deep fluency in TypeScript and Node.js, and comfortable shipping product features, not just platform work.

• You know how to build with AI, not just use it. Tools like Claude Code, Codex, and other coding agents are a core part of your engineering workflow, and you know how to use them to dramatically increase your speed and output without outsourcing technical judgment.

• Speed without the debt. You move fast without leaving behind the kind of infrastructure mess that makes a platform painful six months later.

• High ownership. You take problems as your own and see them through — the mark of the people who thrive here.

Work Authorization

Candidates must be currently authorized to work in their respective country. For this role, we are considering U.S. candidates who are U.S. citizens, U.S. lawful permanent residents (Green Card holders), or individuals who otherwise currently hold valid authorization to work in the United States.

For Canadian candidates, we are considering Canadian citizens, Canadian permanent residents, or individuals who otherwise currently hold valid authorization to work in Canada.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Affiniti is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace and consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Affiniti provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities and applicants with disabilities throughout the recruiting process, consistent with applicable law.