Staff Backend Engineer

ValCera; New York (NY); Presencial; USD 180.000 - 240.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

ValCera, a seed-stage fintech in New York, is building software that banks use to run roadshows, investor conferences, and related scheduling. The role focuses on making the platform scalable to bank-grade loads, owning its services, the PostgreSQL layer, and AWS infrastructure.

As an individual contributor with mentoring, you will design boundaries, data models, and infrastructure, build the hardest systems end-to-end, and implement integrations with financial institutions on the platform.

Formación

• 6–10 years as a backend engineer with staff-level scope.
• Experience scaling core backend services, databases, and infra.
• Production AWS experience with reliable systems.

Responsabilidades

• Own the scaling of the core platform including services and PostgreSQL.
• Set architecture for the next stage and define data models, boundaries, and infra.
• Build and operate the hardest systems from design to production.
• Develop integrations moving data between platform and institutions.
• Lay the data foundation for AI features through throughput and design.
• Mentor through design reviews and pair programming as an IC.
• Handle production: performance work and incidents, on-call when needed.

Conocimientos

Backend engineering

PostgreSQL at scale

AWS

Architecture & design

Herramientas

Pulumi or Terraform

Descripción del empleo

A seed-stage fintech in New York, under 20 people, building the software investment banks use to run roadshows, investor conferences, and the targeting and scheduling around them. At most banks that work still runs on spreadsheets and manual workflow. More than a dozen banks run on the platform today, three of them among the fifteen largest in North America. The founders came from investment banking and big tech.

The Role

Make the platform hold at bank scale

Own the systems the banks depend on, set the next stage's architecture, and bring the scaling judgment the team has been missing.

The product is a workflow platform that investment banks use every day. This role owns its scaling: the services, the PostgreSQL layer underneath them, the integrations with the institutions on the platform, and the AWS infrastructure. You make the architecture decisions, build the hardest systems yourself, and raise the bar for the engineers around you through design and code review. It is an individual contributor role with mentoring inside it, and no people management.

What is actually unsolved

The platform was built fast by a small team, and it works: more than a dozen banks use it in their daily workflow. The next step is more institutions, more data, and AI-driven features on top, at the reliability a bank expects from software its bankers use to sell a deal. The architecture that gets there has not been decided. The database is the critical path, the service boundaries are still being drawn, and the person who draws them has not been hired yet. That is this role.

Responsibilities

• Own the scaling of the core platform: the services and the PostgreSQL layer the banks' workflows run on.
• Set the service architecture for the next stage, and make the calls on boundaries, data models and infrastructure.
• Build the hardest, most critical systems yourself, from design through to production.
• Build and operate the integrations that move data between the platform and the institutions on it.
• Lay the technical foundation for AI-driven features: the data, throughput and service design they need.
• Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, code review and pairing, as an individual contributor.
• Carry production: performance work, incidents, and being reachable outside business hours when a bank needs it.

Requirements

• Built and scaled backend systems end to end, across databases, infrastructure and integrations, at a company that was growing fast while you were there.
• PostgreSQL at scale: you have owned a production database under real load, including the schema, indexing, query and migration work.
• Production AWS: you have architected, deployed and operated systems you were accountable for.
• 6 to 10 years as a backend engineer, with Staff-level scope: owned a platform end to end, led engineers through design, set architecture.

Nice to Have

• Java and Spring Boot, or a comparable typed backend framework.
• Infrastructure as code with Pulumi or Terraform.
• Time at big tech or a major fintech at scale earlier in your career, before the startup years.
• Building the data foundations for AI or machine learning features inside a product.

Culture

A small team, with the co-founders in the room every day and no management layer between you and them. The engineers are early in their careers, so the senior judgment on design and on what ships is yours, and so is much of the teaching. The office is in New York, five days a week, and the day runs long: most of the team is in until seven or eight. The company does not sponsor visas, now or later.

Kindly note that only candidates with experience working in VC-Backed Startups will be considered.