Backend Engineer

Clera; United States; Remote; USD 132,000 - 166,000; Full time

Job summary

Clera is seeking a backend engineer to join a fintech team building compliance and identity infrastructure for businesses. You will design scalable, high-trust systems and help shape the engineering culture of a senior, distributed team solving a genuinely hard technical problem.

You will design and build backend systems, architect scalable APIs, and champion testing, quality, and maintainability. The role emphasizes collaboration, leadership, and solving complex regulatory challenges.

Qualifications

• 5 or more years of backend engineering experience building production APIs, distributed services, or backend systems.
• Strong systems thinking: ability to see beyond individual features and reason about large-scale architectural problems.
• Experience building in high-trust or regulated domains such as fintech, payments, or identity.
• Hands-on experience with relational databases (Postgres or similar) in production.
• Experience with message queues or event-driven architectures (RabbitMQ, Kafka, or similar).
• Experience deploying and managing applications in containerized or cloud environments (Kubernetes, AWS, or similar).
• A track record of writing automated tests and maintaining testable codebases.
• Familiarity with Node.js, TypeScript, Express, and Event Sourcing patterns is a plus but not required.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend systems that are clean, testable, and efficient.
• Architect scalable APIs and infrastructure suited to high-trust, regulated environments.
• Bring strong opinions on testing, quality, and long-term maintainability to every project.
• Tackle complex product challenges by thinking deeply about user needs and system behavior.
• Shape engineering practices and technical culture through collaboration and hands-on leadership.

Skills

Backend engineering

Systems thinking

Testing & quality

Communication

Curiosity

Fintech domain experience

Postgres knowledge

Event-driven architecture

Kubernetes experience

AWS experience

Node.js

TypeScript

Express

Event Sourcing

Tools

Postgres

RabbitMQ

Kafka

Kubernetes

AWS

Node.js

TypeScript

Express

Event Sourcing

Job description

About the Role

This is a backend engineering role at the heart of a fintech team building compliance and identity infrastructure for businesses. You will design scalable, high-trust systems and help shape the engineering culture of a senior, distributed team solving a genuinely hard technical problem.

What You'll Do

• Design and build backend systems that are clean, testable, and efficient.

• Architect scalable APIs and infrastructure suited to high-trust, regulated environments.

• Bring strong opinions on testing, quality, and long-term maintainability to every project.

• Tackle complex product challenges by thinking deeply about user needs and system behavior.

• Shape engineering practices and technical culture through collaboration and hands-on leadership.

What We're Looking For

• 5 or more years of backend engineering experience building production APIs, distributed services, or backend systems; the team skews toward 7+ years.

• Strong systems thinking: ability to see beyond individual features and reason about large-scale architectural problems.

• Experience building in high-trust or regulated domains such as fintech, payments, or identity.

• Hands-on experience with relational databases (Postgres or similar) in production.

• Experience with message queues or event-driven architectures (RabbitMQ, Kafka, or similar).

• Experience deploying and managing applications in containerized or cloud environments (Kubernetes, AWS, or similar).

• A track record of writing automated tests and maintaining testable codebases.

• Familiarity with Node.js, TypeScript, Express, and Event Sourcing patterns is a plus but not required.

• Background at a high-caliber fintech, payments, or high-growth technology company is a strong signal.

• Clear communicator who enjoys breaking down complexity and collaborating closely with teammates.

• Comfortable working with ambiguity and driven by curiosity, big ambitions, and kindness.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: EUR 116,000 to 146,000, applied consistently at each level with no individual salary negotiation. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

Fully remote, open to candidates in European timezones. European timezone availability is a hard requirement. The team meets in person every six weeks for a company-wide gathering.