Backend Engineer, Integrations Platform

Pinwheel; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full medical, dental, and vision

Flexible PTO

Paid parental leave

401K for retirement

Free Citibike membership

Job summary

Pinwheel is seeking a mid-level Backend Engineer to join our Integrations Platform team to improve reliability and performance in our hybrid environment. With a focus on platform-layer features, you'll own projects end-to-end, ship performance improvements, and participate in on-call operations.

This role combines hands-on building in a dynamic environment, ideal for those excited about contributing to the future of financial services while working with top brands.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of backend integrations engineering experience building production services.
• Strong Python skills (or comparable language with a clear path to ramping on Python 3.10+).
• Comfort with concurrency and async patterns like threads, gevents, async/await.

Responsibilities

• Own platform projects end-to-end, from scoping and design review through shipping and operation.
• Ship reliability and performance improvements to shared infrastructure.
• Operate the platform in production, participate in on-call rotation, and triage incidents.

Skills

Backend integrations engineering

Python

AWS

Production operations

AI-assisted development

Concurrency

Education

Computer Science degree or equivalent

Tools

Selenium

FastAPI

Redis

Celery

gRPC

Job description

Pinwheel - Building the future of financial services in partnership with the biggest brands “I love my banking app!” said no one, ever. Pinwheel is on a mission to change that. We believe banks and financial service providers represent the greatest opportunity to build 10x better experiences, especially in the AI age. We’re building the next generation of financial products alongside some of the biggest names in the market including Robinhood, DoorDash, Chime, Cash App, Credit Karma, American Express, Discover, Intuit, Acorns, Visa and more. If you’re excited by the idea of having your work touch and impact the lives of hundreds of millions of consumers, Pinwheel is the place for you. If you get stoked about building products alongside the biggest brands in the world, Pinwheel is the place for you. If you want to join a scrappy, hustling team that is obsessed with defining the future of financial services, Pinwheel is the place for you! Pinwheel has raised $77M from top-tier investors such as Coatue, Notable, First Round, Upfront, Primary, American Express, Franklin Templeton, Indeed, Semper Virens and more. This role is hybrid with 3 days a week in our NYC office. This position does not offer visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Who are we looking for?

Pinwheel's Integrations Platform (IP) team builds the services, primitives, and tooling that make 1800+ integrations work at scale, including proxy management, browser automation, identity flows, session handling, and the runtime that every Integrations Engineer (IE) builds on top of.

We're hiring a mid-level Backend Engineer to own well-scoped platform projects end-to-end, ship reliability and performance improvements that benefit every IE, and grow into broader systems ownership. You'll spend your time roughly between platform-layer feature work (services, jobs, framework improvements), production reliability (on-call rotation, incident response, dependency hygiene), and integration-adjacent infrastructure (proxy pools, browser fleet, identity/auth tooling).

This is a hands-on builder role on a small, high-leverage team.

Pinwheel is a hybrid environment, with a 3-day in-office requirement here in our NYC headquarters, near Union Square.

What will you do?

• Own platform projects end-to-end, from scoping and design review through shipping and operation
• Scraping Engineering & Research Heavy Projects: You've worked on reverse engineering problems such as integrations, scrapers, automation, or platform work against systems that are moving targets. Familiar with the rhythm of "ship a fix, monitor for changes, ship the next fix."
• Ship reliability and performance improvements to shared infrastructure (proxy management, browser fleet, on-prem infra, session/state management, latency-sensitive AWS code paths)
• Raise the floor for Integration Engineers through shared libraries, custom lint rules, internal tooling, and code review that catches systemic issues before they ship
• Apply AI-assisted workflows thoughtfully, both to your own work and to the tooling other engineers use
• Operate the platform in production: participate in the on-call rotation, triage incidents, write postmortems, and ship fixes that prevent recurrence
• Stay on top of dependency and security hygiene, including CodeQL findings, CVE remediation, TLS/crypto updates

What qualifications are necessary?

• 3-5 years of backend integrations engineering experience building production services
• Computer Science degree or equivalent practical experience
• Strong Python skills (or comparable language with a clear path to ramping on Python 3.10+)
• Production operations experience: you've been on an on-call rotation, debugged real incidents, and shipped fixes under time pressure
• Working knowledge of AWS. Experience with one of DynamoDB, S3, IAM, ECR, and the operational instincts that come with it (latency, retries, throttling)
• Possess solid systems-design fundamentals. You can scope a small service, reason about failure modes, and defend tradeoffs in design review
• AI-enhanced development: you've meaningfully integrated AI-assisted engineering (Claude Code, Copilot, agentic tooling) into your workflow and have opinions about where it helps vs. hurts
• Comfort with concurrency and async patterns such as threads, gevents / greenlets, async / await, or equivalent

Nice to haves:

• Browser automation: Selenium, CDP (Chrome DevTools Protocol), Playwright
• Browser fingerprinting work: TLS fingerprinting (JA3), header / User-Agent analysis, captcha challenges (Turnstile, reCAPTCHA, Arkose), residential or datacenter proxy management
• Identity protocols at a working level: OAuth2, SAML, OIDC, MFA orchestration (Okta, Microsoft Entra, PingOne, Duo, ID.me)
• FastAPI, Redis, Celery, gRPC in production
• Fintech, payroll, or other regulated environments

At Pinwheel, total compensation is made up of salary + equity + benefits. We recruit motivated and high performing talent, and work to compensate people in line with the value they can bring to the organization in delivering outsized results. The talent market is competitive, and maintaining our ability to recruit and retain the best team possible is a top priority for Pinwheel. When creating an offer, we consider interview performance, candidate experience, external market competitiveness, and internal equity in thoughtfully assessing compensation. The expected cash salary range for this role is $115,000-$140,000 base.

Why join Pinwheel?

Best time to join - Our company is small but well-funded, meaning you are joining at a time where you can impact and shape the company.

Be a cultural builder - You will have an active hand in molding the company culture and being a part of the entrepreneurial journey.

Build something revolutionary - Help build the products on the bleeding edge of financial services!

Benefits included:

• Great compensation & equity packages
• Full medical, dental, and vision benefits
• Life & short-term disability insurance
• Flexible PTO policy that prioritizes recharge and balance
• Paid parental leave
• 401K for retirement planning
• Mentorship opportunities
• Free Citibike membership
• Pet friendly offices and Zoom spaces

Diversity & Inclusion at Pinwheel

At Pinwheel, we are committed to building an environment that is diverse and inclusive. We believe that having people across different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives enables us not only to build the best financial products, but to help us realize the best versions of ourselves. Pinwheel is an equal opportunity employer, and we aim to be an open and supportive place to work.