Senior Backend Engineer | On-Site | Seattle

Grid; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

401K

Life Insurance

Job summary

Grid, located in Seattle, is seeking a Backend Engineer passionate about building scalable systems to enhance user experiences. You will work across product and financial systems, owning critical components that power Grid's offerings and impact millions.

This role involves systems development, shipping new features through a rapid CI/CD process, and utilizing data to drive decisions. Ideal candidates thrive in dynamic environments, showcasing autonomy and an eagerness for continuous learning.

Qualifications

• Excited by exploring AI tooling in development and operations.
• Experience in building and operating scalable backend systems.
• Proven track record in data-driven system design.

Responsibilities

• Build core systems behind Grid’s products.
• Own systems end to end using CI/CD pipelines.
• Analyze product performance using SQL and analytics tools.
• Design and operate distributed, event-driven systems.

Skills

AI tooling experimentation

Production backend systems

Data-driven systems

Dynamic decision making

Autonomy and initiative

Curiosity and optimism

Self-starter

Tools

GCP

Go

SQL

BigQuery

MySQL

Spanner

Job description

About Us

Today’s financial system is built to favor those with money. Grid’s mission is to level that playing field by building financial products that help users better manage their financial future. The Grid app lets users access cash, build credit, spend money, optimize their taxes, and lots, lots more. Grid is a fast-growing team that’s deeply passionate about making a difference in the lives of millions. We’re solving huge problems and believe that every team member has a big role to play.

The role

We’re adding Backend Engineers to help build the foundations that power everything at Grid. You’ll work across product, core financial systems, infrastructure, and data, — working throughout the backend stack to power and improve our user experiences. From distributed systems processing millions of transactions to product facing components directly impacting the user experience, you’ll own critical components that scale with the company and directly impact how our products perform in the real world. If you enjoy building high-leverage systems from scratch, this role puts you at the center of it all.

The team

We’re focused on serving our users above all else all while building a robust business. To this end, Grid's team members experience high levels of autonomy and ownership, and as a company we value curiosity, learning and growth. At Grid, you'll be surrounded by a team that is motivated, mission-driven and pragmatic.

The tech stack

Our backend platform runs on GCP with Go, protobufs, BigQuery, MySQL, and Spanner. We’ve built a wide range of homegrown systems that power everything from financial ledgers and payment processing to AI-driven workflows, web scraping, and real-time analytics. From day one, we’ve focused on clean, reliable foundations — giving us a platform that scales efficiently and enables fast, data-informed product development.

Who You Are

• AI Native: You are excited by the opportunity to explore and experiment with AI tooling in both development and operational applications
• Backend Systems Experience: You have real experience building and operating production backend systems, ideally in Go on cloud infrastructure like GCP, and are comfortable owning services that must be reliable, scalable, and performant.
• Data-Driven Systems: You have proven experience building and operating backend systems that are deeply informed by data, designing clean data models, instrumenting services with meaningful metrics, and using analytics to guide system and product decisions.
• Startup Person: You seek high growth opportunities and are constantly learning about the world around you. You feel at home with dynamic decision making and an iterative approach.
• Autonomy and Initiative: You have the ability to work independently and take ownership of projects, showcasing a proactive approach to identifying key leverage points for data products.
• Curiosity and Optimism: You are constantly asking why the world around them works the way it does, and have the will to change it.
• Self Starter: You have the confidence to prioritize work and delivery demonstrable results on a tight cadence.

What You'll Do

• Systems Development: You’ll build the core systems behind Grid’s products. From the services that directly control our users' experience to the transaction processing and financial ledgering systems that power everything we ship. You will have the opportunity to contribute to every layer of our product and core financial infrastructure.
• Shipping & Iteration: You’ll own systems end to end — from design and implementation through deployment and production support — using our rapid CI/CD pipeline to ship improvements daily. We take a data-driven, iterative approach to building toward ambitious goals through well-engineered, incremental releases.
• Data Analysis: Grid is deeply data-driven, with robust pipelines and analytics infrastructure across the platform. You’ll use SQL and analytical tools to evaluate product and system performance and help define what success looks like by shaping the metrics that guide our decisions.
• Event-Driven Distributed Systems: Grid’s backend is built around Pub/Sub and asynchronous workflows. You’ll design and operate distributed, event-driven systems; reasoning about state, consistency, and failure modes to deliver reliable, seamless user experiences at scale.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

This role will also be eligible for equity and benefits. Actual base pay will be determined based on permissible factors, including transferable skills, work experience, market demand, and primary work location.

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401K
• Life Insurance

Salary Range

$120,000 - $200,000 per year