Senior Backend Integration Engineer

elementfleet; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 133,000 - 182,000; Full time

Job summary

Element is seeking a Senior Backend Integration Engineer to design, build, and maintain the API gateway and integration layer that connects Element Pay services with external systems. You will own authentication, authorization, and the trust framework across services, while guiding architecture and engineering practices for reliable enterprise integration.

You will lead schema design, service contracts, and event-driven patterns, mentoring engineers and helping to deliver scalable, observable

Qualifications

• 6+ years of backend engineering, with distributed systems or platform experience.
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript/Node.js and/or Go, with depth in at least one.
• Production experience with GraphQL and/or gRPC, including schema/service-contract design.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build the API gateway for Element Pay, including routing and rate limiting.
• Design and maintain integration layer interfaces, GraphQL schemas, and service contracts.
• Own authentication/authorization, token handling, SSO integrations, and identity propagation.
• Implement caching and outbound notifications to optimize performance and reliability.
• Develop tests, metrics, traces, logs, and alerts to ensure production stability.
• Provide technical guidance through design/code reviews and mentoring.
• Resolve complex production and integration problems with reusable patterns.

Skills

TypeScript/Node.js

Go

GraphQL

gRPC

API gateway design

OAuth2/OIDC/JWTs

Asynchronous messaging

Education

College/University degree

Tools

Envoy

Kong

Traefik

Kubernetes Gateway API

Protocol Buffers

OpenTelemetry

Datadog

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Get started on an exciting career at Element!

Element employees make a difference in the lives of others every day. We are re-defining the fleet management industry to be people first, then business - delivering on our promise of a superior client experience. This takes hard work and innovation, and we need more like-minded people on our team.

About the Role

We're looking for a technical leader to join our team as Senior Backend Integration Engineer. In this role, you will design, build, and maintain the API gateway and integration layer that connect Element Pay services and external systems. You will be accountable for secure, reliable, and scalable service integration, with primary ownership of authentication and authorization, cross-service API delegation, caching, external notification infrastructure, and the engineering standards that support safe operation and evolution of these capabilities. You will also set technical direction for the integration domain through design documentation, architecture discussions, code review, production support, incident follow-up, and mentoring.

What You'll Do

• Architect and build the API gateway, including routing, schema and request validation, rate limiting, and edge policies, to provide a secure, reliable, and scalable entry point to the Element Pay platform.
• Design and maintain the integration layer and service interfaces, including GraphQL schemas, gRPC contracts, and service-to-service delegation patterns, to enable consistent and dependable communication across internal services and third-party systems.
• Own authentication and authorization capabilities, including token issuance and validation, session handling, scoped credentials, SSO integrations, and identity propagation, to protect platform access and support secure enterprise integration.
• Design and operate caching and outbound notification capabilities, including cache invalidation, webhooks, retry and backoff policies, dead-letter handling, and delivery guarantees, to improve performance and provide resilient external event delivery.
• Build automated unit, integration, and contract testing and instrument services with metrics, traces, logs, and alerts, to maintain change safety, observability, performance, and production reliability.
• Set technical direction for the integration domain through design documentation, architecture discussions, code review, production support, incident follow-up, and mentoring, to strengthen engineering practices and continuously improve platform resilience.
• Owns assigned systems and technical outcomes end to end and provides technical guidance to other engineers through design review, code review, pairing, documentation, and mentoring.
• Anticipates and resolves non-routine production and integration problems, establishes reusable patterns, and improves engineering approaches to authentication, service communication, caching, notification delivery, testing, and observability.

Basic Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional backend engineering experience, including significant experience with distributed systems or platform/infrastructure engineering.
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript (Node.js) and/or Go, with depth in at least one and ability to work effectively in the other.
• Production experience with GraphQL and/or gRPC, including schema or service-contract design, performance, versioning, and backward compatibility.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, or operating API gateways, service meshes, backend-for-frontend layers, or comparable integration infrastructure.
• Practical experience with authentication and authorization technologies and patterns, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWTs, mTLS, and API key management.
• Experience with asynchronous and event-driven architecture using message queues, pub/sub, or event-streaming technologies.

Preferred Qualifications

• Education: College/University degree preferred.
• Experience with federated GraphQL or gRPC gateway patterns.
• Experience building partner- or customer-facing APIs, developer documentation, SDKs, or sandbox environments.
• Experience designing webhook delivery at scale, including signing, replay protection, ordering, and partner-side troubleshooting.
• Familiarity with Protocol Buffers and API gateway technologies such as Envoy, Kong, Traefik, or Kubernetes Gateway API.
• Experience with observability platforms and standards such as OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Prometheus, or Grafana.

Location : San Francisco

Compensation

The hiring base salary range for this position is $132,500- $182,160 annually. This range represents the Company's good-faith estimate of the expected base salary at the time of posting. Salary ranges may vary based on the geographic location where the work is performed. The salary range listed in this posting applies only to the location identified. Actual compensation will be determined based on several factors, including the successful candidate's qualifications, knowledge, skills, experience, internal pay equi