Founding Backend Engineer

Spoks; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid vacation days (15)

Company holidays (10)

Paid sick days (5)

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) employer match (4%)

Annual offsites

Equipment provided

Job summary

Spoks in Austin seeks a senior backend engineer to own substantial parts of the platform, from design to production. You’ll build alongside an established team in Europe as the platform scales from millions to billions of emails.

The stack includes NestJS with TypeScript, PostgreSQL and Google Cloud Platform, plus React/Next.js for web and Flutter for mobile. You’ll shape architecture, improve APIs and ensure reliable operations in a fast-growing environment.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building large-scale production systems on cloud platforms (GCP/AWS/Azure).
• Strong TypeScript backend development with NestJS and PostgreSQL.
• Understanding of queues, retries, and reliable background processing.

Responsibilities

• Build backend functionality for email, SMS, automation, CRM, analytics and AI-powered workflows.
• Improve APIs, data flows and database performance as volumes grow.
• Make sound decisions about architecture, security and cloud costs, and implement changes.
• Keep services reliable with monitoring, safe releases and effective debugging.

Skills

TypeScript Backend

Production systems

Cloud architecture

Relational databases

NestJS

PostgreSQL

Performance optimization

Monitoring & debugging

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

NestJS

PostgreSQL

Google Cloud Platform

AWS

Azure

Job description

As a senior engineer on our founding Austin team, you'll own substantial parts of Spoks' backend, from technical design through to production. You'll build alongside our established engineering team in Europe, making the platform faster, more reliable and more efficient as we grow from millions of emails to billions.

The platform and stack

The same communication platform powers Spoks for Shopify merchants and Knips for real estate businesses. It brings together email, SMS, automation, CRM, analytics, forms and AI-powered workflows across web and mobile.

We use NestJS with TypeScript, PostgreSQL and Google Cloud Platform on the backend, React and Next.js with TypeScript for web, and Flutter for mobile. You'll take responsibility for core backend components and help shape architecture and technical direction with the team.

What you will do

• Build backend functionality for email, SMS, automation, CRM, analytics and AI-powered workflows.
• Improve APIs, data flows and database performance as stores and sending volumes grow.
• Make sound decisions about architecture, security and cloud costs, and implement the changes.
• Keep the services you own reliable, with useful monitoring, safe releases and effective debugging.

What you will bring

• You have hands-on experience building and operating large-scale production systems on GCP, AWS or Azure. You can explain the traffic or data volumes involved and how you handled bottlenecks, reliability and cloud costs. Strong experience with any one of these clouds is relevant; you'll work in GCP at Spoks.
• You're strong in TypeScript backend development and relational databases. Experience with NestJS and PostgreSQL is particularly relevant.
• You understand queues, retries and how to keep background processing reliable as workloads grow.
• Can turn an unclear problem into a practical implementation and explain the tradeoffs.

Coding agents

We expect you to use coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex as part of your development workflow. Show us how you give an agent context, break down a task, review its changes and verify the result. You should be able to catch mistakes, redirect the work and explain the code you ship.

What to tell us

Tell us about a backend problem you solved as a product grew. What was happening, what did you change, and did it work? Give us a sense of the scale and your part in it. A short written explanation is enough.

Why Spoks

Help build the challenger.

Entrepreneurs need powerful marketing they can afford and use without becoming software specialists. We’re taking on Klaviyo and Mailchimp with email and SMS built for Shopify, a mobile app and AI that helps merchants get the work done.

Hundreds of paying stores already use Spoks, and we’re growing fast. Our goal is 100,000 customers with a lean team. You’ll work directly with our founder in Austin, own a meaningful part of that growth and have experienced colleagues in Norway and Poland to draw on.

Working at Spoks

This is a full-time role. We work hybrid in Austin, with at least three days together in the office each week.

• 15 paid vacation days, 10 company holidays and 5 paid sick days each year.
• Medical, dental and vision insurance.
• A 401(k) employer match of up to 4% of eligible pay.
• Annual offsites with the whole team. Next up: Norway, with fjords, good food and time together. Sauna and a dip in the ice-cold sea are optional.
• Your work computer and the equipment needed for the role.

Your compensation

$150,000–$220,000 annual base salary. Your offer within the range reflects the experience and skills you bring to the work.

Annual company performance bonus tied to net subscription ARR growth.

Bonus targets are agreed before the performance period. Equity may also be discussed as part of your offer.

Getting to know each other