Lead Backend Engineer

Attain; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Attain is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to act as the backend technical anchor for the Frisbee Rewards consumer application and lead across Attain's mobile engineering teams.

The role focuses on a backend-driven Frisbee architecture with a data-driven mobile client strategy, offering a path to broader technical leadership and impact across the product and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience building and owning backend systems in production environments.
• Strong experience designing APIs, service boundaries, and data models.
• Experience evolving complex systems and working with microservice architectures.
• Experience operating systems in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Experience working closely with iOS and Android engineering teams.
• Familiarity with backend- or configuration-driven client architectures.
• Experience with gRPC, protobuf, or GraphQL.
• Experience with relational databases.
• Understanding of mobile performance characteristics and constraints.
• Exposure to React Native.
• Experience integrating third-party SDKs (e.g., analytics, scanning, CRM).

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own backend services (primarily Rust-based microservices) that power the Frisbee consumer experience.
• Own backend systems responsible for business logic, feature flags, and UX configuration that control mobile behavior and layout.
• Define and maintain clean, well-documented APIs and client-server contracts used by iOS and Android applications.
• Partner closely with mobile engineers to enable fast, predictable execution and unblock delivery.
• Act as technical owner for major initiatives from design through production.
• Provide architectural guidance and code review across backend and mobile codebases.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to translate customer needs into scalable systems.
• Participate in planning, prioritization, and delivery with a strong bias toward execution.
• Occasionally contribute to mobile codebases when needed.
• Help establish engineering standards and raise the technical bar across the team.

Skills

Backend design

API design

Microservices

Cloud platforms

Mobile collaboration

gRPC

GraphQL

Relational DBs

React Native

SDK integration

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Protobuf

SQL

React Native

Job description

About Attain Built for consumers and companies, alike. In a world driven by data, we believe consumers and businesses can coexist. Our founders had a vision to empower consumers to leverage their greatest asset—their data—in exchange for modern financial services. Built with this vision in mind, our platform allows consumers to access savings tools, earned wages and rewards without cost or hidden fees. In exchange, they give permission to use their real‑time data for research, insights and targeted advertising.

At Attain, your contribution will help us build a more equitable and efficient data sharing ecosystem—whether helping consumers access modern financial services or businesses leverage data to achieve better outcomes. You'll have the opportunity to work directly with hands‑on leaders and mission‑driven individuals every day.

Attain Office Hybrid Schedule (where applicable)

• Redwood City, CA: Mondays (in‑office for stand‑ups, all‑hands) and choice of three days between Tues‑Friday

About the role

As the Lead Software Engineer supporting Frisbee Rewards, this role will serve as the backend technical anchor for the Frisbee consumer application, while also acting as the execution lead across Attain's mobile engineering teams.

The mobile application for Frisbee Rewards has an intentionally back‑end driven infrastructure. Business logic, feature gating and much of the user experience configuration (i.e. business logic, feature gating, component arrangement and screen composition) is controlled by backend services. Mobile clients are designed to be thin rendering layers that interpret structured data and configuration delivered by the backend. This is an exciting opportunity for a senior developer who is excited about growing into a broader technical leadership role that will make an impact cross‑functionally.

You’ll be a great fit for the role if

• You bring strong backend engineering experience and enjoy owning systems end to end, including making pragmatic architectural decisions in ambiguous problem spaces
• You're excited to design and build backend services that orchestrate product behavior, business logic, and user experience
• You enjoy working closely with mobile engineers and are comfortable defining APIs, schemas, and data models that power data‑driven mobile clients
• You value clear communication, strong engineering judgment, and constructive feedback
• You're interested in growing into broader technical leadership over time

What a typical week will look like

• Design, build, and own backend services (primarily Rust‑based microservices) that power the Frisbee consumer experience
• Own backend systems responsible for business logic, feature flags, and UX configuration that control mobile behavior and layout
• Define and maintain clean, well‑documented APIs and client‑server contracts used by iOS and Android applications
• Partner closely with mobile engineers to enable fast, predictable execution and unblock delivery
• Act as technical owner for major initiatives from design through production
• Provide architectural guidance and code review across backend and mobile codebases
• Collaborate with Product and Design to translate customer needs into scalable systems
• Participate in planning, prioritization, and delivery with a strong bias toward execution
• Occasionally contribute to mobile codebases when needed
• Help establish engineering standards and raise the technical bar across the team

Preferred Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience building and owning backend systems in production environments
• Strong experience designing APIs, service boundaries, and data models
• Experience evolving complex systems and working with microservice or service‑oriented architectures
• Experience operating systems in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Experience working closely with iOS and Android engineering teams
• Familiarity with backend‑ or configuration‑driven client architectures
• Experience with gRPC, protobuf, or GraphQL
• Experience with relational databases
• Understanding of mobile performance characteristics and constraints
• Exposure to React Native
• Experience integrating third‑party SDKs (e.g., analytics, scanning, CRM)

At Attain, we are passionate about finding people to continuously help us grow our organization. We encourage you to apply, even if your experience doesn't match every detail of the job description. If we don't see something that immediately fits, we will keep your resume on file for future opportunities.