Staff Backend Engineer - Scale & AI Platform

Bonfirevc; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Competitive salary & equity

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Lunch and commute stipend

Job summary

Axle in New York City is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to own architecture and scale critical systems, focusing on email delivery, reporting, data integrations, and AI pipelines.

You will work hands-on, shipping end-to-end backend features with Java/Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, and AWS, shaping services for multi-tenant data and high-throughput needs.

The role requires strong communication, ownership, and the ability to operate in a fast-paced startup environment on-site in Flatiron.

Qualifications

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Backend engineering

Java/Spring Boot

PostgreSQL

AWS

Ownership

Communication

Tools

Pulumi

Terraform

Job description

Axle in New York City is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to own architecture and scale critical systems, focusing on email delivery, reporting, data integrations, and AI pipelines.

You will work hands-on, shipping end-to-end backend features with Java/Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, and AWS, shaping services for multi-tenant data and high-throughput needs.

The role requires strong communication, ownership, and the ability to operate in a fast-paced startup environment on-site in Flatiron.