Senior Backend Engineer — Risk

Clara; United States; Remote; USD 160,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options (ESOP)

Learning budget

Accelerated development paths

English as working language; Spanish/7

Job summary

Clara is the leading platform in Latin America for executing and managing payment operations. We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to lead risk-related services, owning the risk decisioning infrastructure and integration with data providers.

You will architect scalable systems, collaborate with Product/Data/Fraud/Compliance, and apply AI tools to accelerate development. Join a fast-moving team delivering reliable credit decisions across markets.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend development experience.
• Solid foundation in Java and Spring Boot with ability to leverage AI tools to improve code quality.
• Strong understanding of microservices and event-driven systems using Kafka.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, and modern dev tooling.
• English proficiency and ability to lead technical discussions across geographies.
• High autonomy, proactivity, and ownership mindset.
• Active interest in applying AI to software engineering at Clara.
• Experience building credit risk, underwriting, or fraud prevention systems in fintech is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and build services for credit risk assessment, limit management, and fraud prevention with fast, traceable decisions.
• Own integrations with credit bureaus and external data providers via clean internal APIs.
• Develop event-driven data flows handling high volumes of risk signals from ingestion to decisioning.
• Collaborate across the full product lifecycle from ideation to deployment.
• Maintain and evolve microservices within a modern architecture.
• Elevate the team through code reviews, pairing, and knowledge sharing.
• Drive cross-team problem solving and architectural discussions.
• Apply AI to ship faster and improve team productivity.

Skills

Backend development

Java

Spring Boot

Microservices

Kafka

AWS

AI tools usage

English communication

Fintech risk/fraud

Tools

Kafka

AWS

Job description

Clara is the leading platform in Latin America for companies to execute and manage every payment operation. More than 50,000 leading and fast-growing businesses run on our corporate cards, bill pay, financing and B2B payments, and in 2025 the Financial Times named Clara the region’s fastest-growing company. We’re passionate about helping every company we work with become more effective—and, through that, raising the region’s competitiveness. We’re ~400 people, backed by Notable Capital, Coatue, Kaszek, monashees, DST Global, ICONIQ, General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs, among others.

Senior Backend Engineer - Risk

Risk is the team that builds the systems behind Clara’s credit decisions, making them fast, accurate, and automated across all our markets. We own the risk decisioning infrastructure and underwriting automation, from assessing new businesses to managing their limits over time, as well as fraud prevention. Much of it runs on the credit bureaus, data providers, and decisioning platform we integrate with, each with its own APIs, formats, and quirks.

We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to lead technical initiatives within the team. You’ll design the services that turn internal and external signals into reliable decisions, shape how the team architect for scale and data volume, and partner closely with Product, Data, Fraud, and Compliance on problems where correctness really matters.

We move fast and trust our engineers to own outcomes end-to-end. That means autonomy to make decisions, proactivity to surface problems before they become blockers, and the attitude to push initiatives across the finish line without waiting to be told what to do.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Designing and building the services behind credit risk assessment, limit management, and fraud prevention, where decisions need to be fast, traceable, and right.
• Owning integrations with credit bureaus and external data providers, abstracting their complexity behind clean, resilient internal APIs.
• Building event-driven flows that process high volumes of risk signals reliably, from ingestion to the decisions that depend on them.
• Collaborating across the full product lifecycle, from ideation to deployment
• Maintaining and evolving microservices within a modern architecture
• Elevating the team through code reviews, pairing, and sharing what you know with peers
• Driving cross-team problem-solving and architectural discussions
• Applying AI tools to ship faster and improve how the team works

Who you are

• 5+ years of backend development experience
• Solid foundation in Java and Spring Boot. You don’t need to have every API memorized - we expect you to lean on AI tools to move faster and fill gaps - but you need the judgment to know when the code is right, when it’s wrong, and why
• Strong understanding of microservices architecture and event-driven systems using Kafka
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, and modern dev tooling
• English proficiency, with the ability to lead technical discussions across geographies
• High autonomy, proactivity, and ownership mindset. You don’t wait for direction - you spot what needs to happen and drive it
• A genuine pull toward AI. You don’t need to be an expert, but you’re actively experimenting with AI tools in your day-to-day work, keep up with where the space is going, and are eager to apply it to how we build. At Clara, AI is part of how we work, not a side topic
• Experience building credit risk, underwriting, or fraud prevention systems in fintech is a strong plus

We’ve kept this list short on purpose - these are the things that actually matter. If you check most of these and the rest you’d close with curiosity and the right tools, we want to hear from you.

Why Clara

• A high talent-density team driven to make an impact in Latin America - low ego, high ownership.
• Competitive salary and stock options (ESOP) from day one.
• An annual learning budget and accelerated development paths.
• English is our working language, with Spanish and Portuguese every day.

How we work

• Clarity - Open and direct communication: we say what we mean and give context where it matters.
• Simplicity - If it can be simpler, it should be.
• Ownership - We own everything we do, end to end. When something needs to happen, we don’t wait.
• Pride - We hold ourselves to a high standard, and it shows in what we deliver.
• ABC (Always Be Changing) - We adapt fast, embrace change, and keep learning.
• Inclusivity - Diverse ideas, stories and perspectives build a better Clara.