Staff Backend Engineer

Axleaccess; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Salary + Equity

Full health insurance

Lunch stipend

Job summary

Axle is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer in NYC (Flatiron). You will write code, tackle hard problems, and shape the platform as it scales, working in a hands-on IC role on the core backend.

The role focuses on building scalable backend systems, optimizing performance, and delivering robust data integrations with Salesforce, Snowflake, and SMTP, while shaping AI-enabled capabilities and improving developer experience.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building production backend systems with Java/Spring Boot or equivalent.
• Deep PostgreSQL experience at scale with multi-tenant schemas.
• Production AWS experience: architect, deploy, operate real systems.
• Proven track record of owning and shipping complex backend projects end-to-end.
• Strong technical judgment under ambiguity.
• Clear, direct communication.

Responsibilities

• Scale critical systems across email delivery, reporting, calendar systems, and data integrations.
• Drive service architecture to modularize backend components.
• Optimize performance: queries, API latency, data-heavy operations.
• Ensure scalable customer data syncs (Salesforce, Snowflake, SMTP) as you onboard clients.
• Shape AI architecture and data pipelines for production use.
• Improve developer experience across the platform.

Skills

Backend engineering

Java/Spring Boot

System design

Communication

Tools

PostgreSQL

AWS

Terraform

Pulumi

Job description

New York, NY (Flatiron) Full-time · In office 5 days 250k – 300k (+ Equity)

Axle is building the intelligent infrastructure for how capital moves on Wall Street.

Trillions of dollars in institutional capital get directed through a web of relationships, meetings, and decisions that still run on spreadsheets, email chains, and tools built over a decade ago. This is the layer where markets actually move, and we're at the forefront of rebuilding it.

We have replaced all of it with one platform, powered by AI agents that strip out the manual work and give bankers strategic leverage. Axle is quickly becoming the operating system for Wall Street's most important relationships.

The investment banks already running on Axle treat us as mission-critical, and we are just getting started. The problems we work on are high-stakes, data-dense, and critical to how markets function.

Our founding team blends Wall Street experience with engineering excellence, drawing on backgrounds at firms like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AWS, and Capital One. We lived the problem firsthand and built the platform we wished existed. Our tight-knit team in NYC is backed by top-tier VCs and former leaders from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel.

About the role

We're looking to hire a Staff Backend Engineer. This is a hands-on IC role where you'll spend the vast majority of your time writing code, solving hard problems, and making architectural decisions that shape the platform as we continue to scale.

What you'll own

• Scale critical systems. Architect and implement solutions for high-throughput challenges across email delivery, reporting, calendar systems, and customer data integrations (Salesforce, SMTP, third-party APIs).
• Service architecture & isolation. Drive initiatives to modularize services within our backend, improving system resilience and enabling independent scaling of key components.
• Performance optimization. Identify and resolve bottlenecks in PostgreSQL queries, API latency, and data-intensive operations.
• Customer integration scalability. Ensure our platform handles growing volumes of customer data syncs (Salesforce, Snowflake, SMTP, etc.) reliably and efficiently as we onboard more clients.
• AI architecture. Shape the technical foundation for our AI capabilities, from system design and data pipelines to production integration.
• Developer experience. Level up the systems that keep the team moving fast.

What you bring

• 8+ years building production backend systems, with strong experience in Java/Spring Boot (our primary stack) or a comparable backend framework where you can ramp quickly.
• Deep experience with relational databases at scale (ideally PostgreSQL). You've tuned queries, designed schemas for multi-tenant systems, and thought carefully about data partitioning.
• Production AWS experience where you've architected, deployed, and operated real systems.
• A track record of independently owning and shipping complex backend projects end-to-end.
• Strong technical judgment under ambiguity. You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and adjusting as you learn.
• Clear, direct communication. You can explain technical tradeoffs to engineers and non-engineers alike.

Nice to haves

• Experience with high-volume data integrations, bulk email distribution, and large-scale API orchestration.
• Background in multi-tenant B2B SaaS.
• Infrastructure-as-code experience (Pulumi, Terraform).
• Experience building or integrating AI features into production systems.

Why this role at Axle

We're building infrastructure that investment banks treat as mission-critical. You'll own hard backend problems — scale, performance, data integrations — and make architectural decisions that stick. No layers between you and the work. If you want to spend your time actually engineering, this is that.

What to know

We are a startup serving institutions that operate under real pressure, and sometimes that pressure lands on us. There will be times you work long hours or respond outside classic windows because a customer or a deal demands it. We balance a lot at once, and we ask everyone to carry real weight. In exchange, you get outsized ownership, a steep learning curve, and a seat at the center of how markets work. We're in our Flatiron office in New York five days a week because we build faster together.

• PTO: Unlimited
• Salary & equity: Competitive compensation with real upside
• Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision — fully covered
• Eats & commute: Lunch and commute stipend, plus office snacks and drinks

The modern standard for corporate access on Wall Street. Built from the inside out.