Senior Software Engineer (Go)

Payforge; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Payforge is seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Go) to design, build, and scale backend services powering card issuing, wallets, and cross-border money movement. You will ship production-grade Go services on Google Cloud, using Spanner and PostgreSQL, with attention to reliability and security.

You will collaborate closely with client engineering teams, with a firm availability window 9:00–14:00 PT on working days, and contribute through code reviews, testing, and mentoring across distributed

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering with backend focus.
• Strong Go (Golang) backend development and API design experience.
• Payments domain experience including idempotency, reconciliation, and lifecycle of transactions.
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform, Spanner and PostgreSQL, including schema design.
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating on GCP and in production.
• Experience designing RESTful and/or gRPC APIs and event-driven systems.
• Proficient in CI/CD, containerization, testing discipline, and observability.
• Confirmed availability to work 9:00–14:00 US Pacific Time on working days.
• Excellent written and spoken English and experience in distributed, remote teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain backend services in Go for payments products.
• Collaborate with client teams during the US Pacific working window.
• Model data on Google Cloud Spanner and PostgreSQL with scalable schemas.
• Implement robust, idempotent payment flows with proper reconciliation.
• Integrate with card networks, issuing processors, and partners via APIs.
• Improve reliability, performance, security, and observability on GCP.
• Ensure compliance with PCI DSS, KYC/AML where applicable.
• Write clean, well-tested code and participate in code reviews.
• Participate in on‑call rotations and incident response.
• Mentor engineers and share knowledge across teams.

Skills

Go (Golang)

Backend development

CI/CD

Testing discipline

Distributed systems design

English communication

On-call / incident response

Mentorship

Tools

GCP (Google Cloud Platform)

Spanner

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes (GKE)

Terraform

Pub/Sub / Kafka

Docker / containerization

Job description

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer (Go) to join Payforge and work with a fast-growing, venture‑backed global payments infrastructure company. The client provides enterprises with a single API for card issuing, wallets, and cross-border money movement, runs prepaid and credit card programs as a scheme principal member, and settles card activity using stablecoins. You will build and scale the backend services behind those products in Go on Google Cloud, using Spanner and PostgreSQL, working directly alongside the client’s engineering teams. To collaborate closely with those teams, availability between 9:00 and 14:00 US Pacific Time on working days is a firm requirement of this role.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and maintain backend services in Go for card issuing, authorization, wallets, and money-movement products, owning features end to end from design through production.
• Work directly with the client’s engineering, product, and operations teams during the shared US Pacific working window — joining planning, design reviews, stand‑ups, and incident calls.
• Model and operate data on Google Cloud Spanner and PostgreSQL, choosing schemas, keys, indexes, and transaction boundaries that hold up under high volume and global distribution.
• Build correct, idempotent payment flows that stay consistent under retries, duplicate events, partial failure, and network timeouts, with reconciliation built in rather than bolted on.
• Integrate with card networks, issuing processors, banking partners, and third‑party providers through well‑designed APIs and event‑driven interfaces.
• Contribute to the reliability, performance, and security of services running on GCP, including observability, alerting, and capacity planning.
• Ensure solutions meet security and regulatory requirements relevant to card issuing and payments (PCI DSS, scheme rules, KYC/AML controls where applicable).
• Write clean, well‑tested code and raise the quality bar through thoughtful code review and documentation.
• Participate in on‑call rotations and production incident response, driving root‑cause analysis through to durable fixes.
• Mentor other engineers and share knowledge across Payforge and client teams.

Required Qualifications:

• Experience: 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including substantial backend development in production systems.
• Strong, hands‑on experience with Go (Golang) building production backend services and APIs.
• Payments experience — for example card issuing, acquiring, processing, authorization, settlement, wallets, or cross‑border money movement — and a solid grasp of idempotency, reconciliation, and transaction lifecycles.
• Experience with Google Cloud Spanner or another distributed SQL database, and strong PostgreSQL skills including schema design, query tuning, and transactions.
• Hands‑on experience deploying and operating services on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Experience designing RESTful and/or gRPC APIs and event‑driven systems (for example with Pub/Sub or Kafka).
• Strong testing discipline and experience with CI/CD, containerisation, and production observability.
• Confirmed availability to work between 9:00 and 14:00 US Pacific Time (approximately 18:00–23:00 CET / 19:00–00:00 EET) on working days to collaborate with client teams.
• Practical, day‑to‑day use of AI coding assistants and LLMs as part of the development workflow, with the engineering judgement to review and validate their output for correctness, security, and maintainability.
• Strong written and spoken English, and experience working in distributed, remote teams across time zones.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Card issuing experience specifically — card program setup, issuer processing, authorization decisioning, or scheme (Visa, Mastercard) integrations.
• Familiarity with stablecoins, blockchain, or digital‑asset payments and settlement.
• Experience with Kubernetes (GKE), Terraform, or other infrastructure‑as‑code tooling on GCP.
• Experience with ledger or double‑entry accounting systems.
• Exposure to compliance‑driven engineering: PCI DSS scope, KYC/AML, or fraud and risk controls.
• Experience working at a high‑growth fintech or in a consultancy embedded with client teams.

What we value?

• Technical excellence - delivering high‑quality, maintainable, and scalable code.
• Problem‑solving mindset - approaching challenges with creativity and precision.
• Collaboration & communication - working effectively with cross‑functional, remote‑first teams.
• Leadership & mentorship - guiding peers, sharing knowledge, and championing best practices.
• Adaptability - being comfortable stepping into back‑end work when business needs arise.

About Payforge

Payforge is a specialist professional‑services company focused exclusively on payments and fintech. We help clients deliver high‑quality, scalable technology solutions in an evolving global financial landscape.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Payforge is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds.