Staff Backend Engineer

Recruiting from Scratch LLC; United States; On-site; USD 165,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Significant equity options

Remote within the United States

20 days PTO annually

Global offsites

100% covered PPO medical insurance

100% covered dental and vision

401(k) with employer contribution

Gym stipend

Continuing education credits

Backend-focused, API-first role

Job summary

Recruiting from Scratch LLC is seeking a seasoned backend engineer to design and maintain external-facing APIs and robust integrations with third-party systems. You’ll own backend logic from design through production, collaborating across teams to deliver scalable, cloud-native services.

The role focuses on APIs and backend infrastructure using Python with a preference for PostgreSQL, Lambda/EC2, and serverless patterns, while operating remotely within the United States.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Meaningful experience building external-facing APIs.
• Experience designing and maintaining integrations with third-party systems.
• Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging, and problem-solving.
• Production experience with Python is preferred, though strong candidates from other OO languages can be considered.
• Experience with serverless technologies, asynchronous workflows, and cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design and build external-facing APIs that support customer workflows.
• Own backend integrations with a wide range of third-party systems and services.
• Translate product and customer requirements into reliable backend business logic.
• Build and improve API endpoints that are stable, scalable, and easy for customers to use.
• Improve database and query performance across backend systems.
• Work with relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL.
• Build asynchronous workflows and cloud-native backend services.
• Diagnose and resolve customer-facing technical issues.
• Improve platform reliability, performance, and operational stability.
• Collaborate with full-stack, data, ML, and DevOps engineers on scalable backend architecture.
• Own projects independently from technical design through production deployment and iteration.
• Contribute to making the platform easier to integrate with and operate at scale.

Skills

API design

Python

Serverless

PostgreSQL

System design

Debugging

Cloud infrastructure

Communication

Ownership

Tools

AWS Lambda

AWS EC2

REST APIs

Job description

Location

Remote – United States

Company Stage of Funding

Venture-Backed Growth-Stage Company

Salary

$165,000–$225,000 + Significant Equity

Company Description

We’re representing a venture-backed AI company building professional-grade software for the insurance industry. Its platform helps insurers automate and improve critical workflows across underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution.

The company’s products are already in production with leading insurers, and the team includes talent from companies such as Facebook, Palantir, Google, Amazon, Uber, Mastercard, and McKinsey.

This role sits on the Client Integrations team and focuses on the external APIs and backend systems that connect the company’s platform to customer workflows and third-party services.

What You Will Do

• Design and build external-facing APIs that support customer workflows.
• Own backend integrations with a wide range of third-party systems and services.
• Translate product and customer requirements into reliable backend business logic.
• Build and improve API endpoints that are stable, scalable, and easy for customers to use.
• Improve database and query performance across backend systems.
• Work with relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL.
• Build asynchronous workflows and cloud-native backend services.
• Work with serverless and cloud technologies, including Lambda and EC2.
• Diagnose and resolve customer-facing technical issues.
• Improve platform reliability, performance, and operational stability.
• Collaborate with full-stack, data, ML, and DevOps engineers on scalable backend architecture.
• Own projects independently from technical design through production deployment and iteration.
• Contribute to making the platform easier to integrate with and operate at scale.

Ideal Background

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Meaningful experience building external-facing APIs.
• Experience designing and maintaining integrations with third-party systems.
• Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging, and problem-solving.
• Production experience with Python is preferred, though strong candidates from other object-oriented language backgrounds can be considered.
• Experience with serverless technologies, asynchronous workflows, and cloud infrastructure.
• Comfortable working with relational databases and optimizing queries.
• Strong understanding of backend reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Able to independently own projects and drive them to completion with limited oversight.
• Strong communicator who proactively surfaces blockers and keeps stakeholders informed.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment with experimentation and changing requirements.

Preferred

• Strong production experience with Python.
• Experience with PostgreSQL.
• Experience building integrations for B2B or enterprise software.
• Familiarity with distributed systems.
• Experience with LLMs or generative AI.
• Background in infrastructure-heavy or API-first software.
• Experience supporting customer-facing production systems where reliability and correctness are important.
• Startup or growth-stage experience with significant individual ownership.

Compensation and Benefits

• Significant equity options package.
• Location: Remote within the United States.
• 20 days of PTO annually.
• Global company offsites.
• 100% covered PPO medical insurance for individuals and families.
• 100% covered dental and vision insurance for individuals and families.
• 401(k) with employer contribution regardless of employee contribution.
• Healthy living/gym stipend.
• Continuing education credits.
• Best suited for a backend engineer who enjoys APIs, third-party integrations, customer-facing technical problems, and owning reliable production systems end-to-end.