Senior Backend Engineer, Platform

Archer; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 126,700 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Archer, based in San Jose, California, is looking for a backend engineer to develop foundational data services for their all-electric aircraft platform. The successful candidate will work on connector frameworks, data consistency, and synchronization strategies.

This role offers a target base pay between $126,700 and $150,000, influenced by skills and experience. Archer promotes workforce diversity and inclusion where every team member is valued for their uniqueness.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in backend engineering with distributed systems.
• Experience with Go or similar programming languages.
• Strong understanding of PostgreSQL performance tuning.

Responsibilities

• Build reusable plumbing for connector frameworks.
• Design logic to map inconsistent enterprise data into entities.
• Implement synchronization strategies with watermark management.
• Define and monitor metrics for observability.

Skills

Backend engineering experience

Proficiency in Go

PostgreSQL expertise

Experience with distributed systems

Data integrity management

Experience with delta syncs

Cloud Native experience

Job description

Archer is an aerospace company based in San Jose, California building an all‑electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft with a mission to advance the benefits of sustainable air mobility. We are designing, manufacturing, and operating an all‑electric aircraft that can carry four passengers while producing minimal noise.

Our sights are set high and our problems are hard, and we believe that diversity in the workplace is what makes us smarter, drives better insights, and will ultimately lift us all to success. We are dedicated to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment that embraces our differences, and supports and celebrates all of our team members.

Role Overview

This role is responsible for building the connector framework and ingestion services that power a foundational data and services platform that unifies enterprise systems into a canonical model. This is not a low‑code integration role. You will write production Go services that handle data reconciliation at scale. Our architecture follows a specific pattern: we fetch and store raw API responses for debugging and replay, then transform them into canonical entities. You are responsible for the "system of record" for how our platform interacts with external source systems.

Responsibilities

• Framework Engineering: Build the reusable plumbing for connectors—including authentication, circuit breaking, retries, and idempotency—so that adding a new data source focuses exclusively on data logic.
• Canonical Mapping: Design the logic to map inconsistent enterprise data (Finance, HR, etc.) into strongly‑typed entities. This includes handling multi‑source enrichment, unit normalization, and field‑level provenance.
• Reliability: Implement synchronization strategies with watermark management to ensure the system recovers gracefully from failures without data loss or duplication.
• Replayability: Build infrastructure to store raw API responses allowing the system to re‑process data from local storage when mapping logic evolves, without re‑querying source APIs.
• Performance: Optimize for high‑volume synchronization, focusing on PostgreSQL performance, concurrent fetching, and batch upserts.
• Observability: Define and monitor metrics for throughput, data drift, and error rates to identify issues before they impact downstream applications.
• Collaboration: Collaborate with platform architect on schema evolution, entity contracts, and the boundary between what connectors own and what the platform layer handles.

Qualifications

Required

• 6+ years in backend engineering: Experience building and operating distributed systems in production.
• Go (or similar): Proficiency with strong typing and concurrency.
• PostgreSQL Expertise: Strong understanding of schema design, indexing strategies, and performance tuning.
• Distributed systems: Experience designing and operating distributed systems.
• Data Integrity: Experience implementing idempotent systems, dead‑letter queues, and backpressure management.
• Delta syncs: Experience designing incremental and delta synchronization mechanisms with watermark tracking and safe recovery from mid‑sync failures.
• Cloud Native: Experience deploying and managing services in AWS or similar environments.

Preferred

• Enterprise Integration: Experience building custom integration frameworks or working with complex ERP/HR APIs (SAP, Workday, etc.).
• Systems Architecture: Understanding of when to utilize polling versus event‑driven patterns (CDC/Kafka).
• AI‑Ready Data: Experience structuring data to be consumed by downstream AI/LLM services.

Please note that this job description is intended to provide a general overview of the position and does not include an exhaustive list of responsibilities and qualifications.

At Archer we aim to attract, retain, and motivate talent that possesses the skills and leadership necessary to grow our business. We drive a pay‑for‑performance culture and reward performance that supports the Company’s business strategy. For this position we are targeting a base pay between $126,700 - $150,000. Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Archer is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Visa Sponsorship

Archer is unable to provide work visa sponsorship for this position at the present time.

Reasonable Accommodations

Archer is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to job applicants with physical or mental disabilities, and those with sincerely held religious beliefs. Applicants who may require reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process should provide their name and contact information to Archer’s People Team at [e-mail]. Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case‑by‑case basis.