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Overview
Join to apply for the
Staff Infrastructure Engineer
role at
Backpack . Base pay
Base pay range $200,000.00/yr - $250,000.00/yr About Backpack
Backpack is a payments infrastructure company building the first connected banking and payments platform for the $1.8 Trillion Higher Education market. Our core platform is used by Universities, connecting information and money flows to facilitate the most complex payment types that represent a growing share of total tuition - already totaling hundreds of billions in annual volume. As education becomes more expensive, students and their families are increasingly looking to a broader array of funding sources, including 529 college savings plans, outside/private scholarships, third-party sponsors, and family contributions - we are bringing these online by building the first payments system for these payment types. Raised $5M in venture funding from Walkabout Ventures and Mischief Ventures, as well as founders and executives from Plaid, SoFi, Brex, Chime, Square and many others. Have built the first connected banking platform in higher education with a team of six, already processing tens of millions in payment volume. Partnered directly with some of the countrys largest universities, including The University of Alabama and Miami University. Our mighty team of six is on a mission to build an entirely new payments system for Higher Ed which significantly reduces the ~$50BN in fees paid by student families every year, improving accessibility and affordability of education across the country. About The Team
Our goal is to make external payments into universities shockingly simple and worry-free for students, families, universities, and funding organizations alike. Behind the scenes, this requires building sophisticated payment operations systems that handle complex money movement, automated reconciliation, and real-time visibility all tailored to the specific needs of university bursars, financial aid teams, and external funders. The Role
We are looking for a highly experienced Senior/Staff software engineer based in New York or Austin who is both a hands on programmer and has a proven track record as technical leader who can architect scalable and robust backend systems. Youll write extensive code, drive the technical architecture and scalability of our platforms, and collaborate with stakeholders to build a generational education payment systems. Youll set the pace, ensuring both high-quality execution and fast iteration, acting as a multiplier to help the entire team deliver impact. This is very much an IC forward role! What The Job Involves
Working closely with our founders, engineers, and operations to make critical technical decisions to enhance performance, security, and scalability for our products and business. Shaping the future of our core payments infrastructure by partnering with leadership to drive technical initiatives as the voice in the room for architectural decisions. Taking full ownership of our infrastructure stack - lead initiatives for our infrastructure stack and make decisions that balance short-term execution with medium and long-term scalability. Setting the strategic direction for engineering quality - develop and embed a culture of robust, automated testing that ensures quality for our customers, and enables us to stay lean. Building new and maintain existing backend services with a focus on performance, reliability and scalability. Mentoring and providing technical guidance to engineering team members, promoting best practices in coding, testing, and architecture. What Were Looking For
Youll do well in this role if, you are someone with: Low-ego and humility, our most valued characteristic and key to our teams success to date. A growth mindset, and a healthy comfort with ambiguity An ability to work with an element of playfulness that unlocks creativity, and also ensure the reliability, security and compliance standards our customers deserve. A great attitude who is always looking for ways to be involved and improve our products. Passion for helping and teaching your colleagues, customers and partners. Intrinsic motivation that loves the idea of building core infrastructure that will make education more accessible and affordable for decades to come. Your Experience
We recognize not everyone will meet all of the criteria. If you meet most of the criteria below and youre excited about the opportunity and willing to learn, wed love to hear from you. 8+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong background in backend development, product engineering, and cloud infrastructure. Minimum 3 years of experience at a senior level. 3+ years of experience building APIs and architecting/building backend systems at scale. Demonstrated success of owning/managing large-scale backend infrastructure and cloud infrastructure management (AWS, Terraform, messaging queues, etc), and CI/CD. Experience managing and organizing multiple ongoing projects at once. Experience in a technical leadership role leading software projects involving multiple engineers. Expertise in JavaScript/TypeScript and Node.js and/or Ruby on rails. Extensive experience with REST APIs. Experience with GraphQL, WebSocket, etc is nice to have. Advanced knowledge of Postgres and/or other relational databases. Experience with other database systems is a plus. Experience with modern testing frameworks and practices including API testing. Knowledge of security best practices in financial services. Strong organizational and prioritization skills. Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively within a remote team via tools like Slack, Notion, and Linear. Nice To Haves
Experience with authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth, JWT) or techniques such SAML, SSO, etc. Knowledge of algorithms and protocols for securing data, including TLS/SSL, digital signatures, hashing, and encryption. Experience in monitoring and observability and running a production application at scale. Have experience building applications from scratch. Domain knowledge in payment processing, identify/auth, or finance. Experience working in Fintech, the financial services industry, or at early/pre-seed start up. Compensation & Benefits
Salary The salary range for this role is $200,000 - $250,000 Equity Competitive Equity Package Benefits
Medical, dental, and vision health care plans Health care FSA/HSA plans 401K Commuter benefits PTO & 10+ Public Holidays Backpack Recharges - dedicated team time off to recharge Location
New York City, NY or Austin, TX. In-office 3-5 days (hybrid). Interview Process
We value transparency. Here is what you can expect: Initial interview with hiring manager or co-founder - 30-45 mins Second interview with co-founder (CEO/COO) or hiring manager - 30-45 mins Coding Assessment - ~60 mins Virtual or in-person onsite, including: Technical interviews Meeting the Backpack team Reference calls (2 references; at least one direct manager) Accommodations
We are committed to providing an accessible interview process. If you need any accommodations during any point in the interview process, please let us know and well work with you to better accommodate your needs. We look forward to hearing from you! We cannot wait to hear from passionate, driven and talented people that are excited about our mission. We are building a first of its kind fintech company to completely revolutionize an entire asset class and, eventually, how all Americans pay for their education. We acknowledge that this is a big ask list so even if there are a couple of missing pieces, we strongly urge you to still apply. Seniority level
Mid-Senior level Employment type
Full-time Job function
Engineering and Information Technology Industries Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Backpack by 2x Location
New York, NY (US) various positions #J-18808-Ljbffr
Join to apply for the
Staff Infrastructure Engineer
role at
Backpack . Base pay
Base pay range $200,000.00/yr - $250,000.00/yr About Backpack
Backpack is a payments infrastructure company building the first connected banking and payments platform for the $1.8 Trillion Higher Education market. Our core platform is used by Universities, connecting information and money flows to facilitate the most complex payment types that represent a growing share of total tuition - already totaling hundreds of billions in annual volume. As education becomes more expensive, students and their families are increasingly looking to a broader array of funding sources, including 529 college savings plans, outside/private scholarships, third-party sponsors, and family contributions - we are bringing these online by building the first payments system for these payment types. Raised $5M in venture funding from Walkabout Ventures and Mischief Ventures, as well as founders and executives from Plaid, SoFi, Brex, Chime, Square and many others. Have built the first connected banking platform in higher education with a team of six, already processing tens of millions in payment volume. Partnered directly with some of the countrys largest universities, including The University of Alabama and Miami University. Our mighty team of six is on a mission to build an entirely new payments system for Higher Ed which significantly reduces the ~$50BN in fees paid by student families every year, improving accessibility and affordability of education across the country. About The Team
Our goal is to make external payments into universities shockingly simple and worry-free for students, families, universities, and funding organizations alike. Behind the scenes, this requires building sophisticated payment operations systems that handle complex money movement, automated reconciliation, and real-time visibility all tailored to the specific needs of university bursars, financial aid teams, and external funders. The Role
We are looking for a highly experienced Senior/Staff software engineer based in New York or Austin who is both a hands on programmer and has a proven track record as technical leader who can architect scalable and robust backend systems. Youll write extensive code, drive the technical architecture and scalability of our platforms, and collaborate with stakeholders to build a generational education payment systems. Youll set the pace, ensuring both high-quality execution and fast iteration, acting as a multiplier to help the entire team deliver impact. This is very much an IC forward role! What The Job Involves
Working closely with our founders, engineers, and operations to make critical technical decisions to enhance performance, security, and scalability for our products and business. Shaping the future of our core payments infrastructure by partnering with leadership to drive technical initiatives as the voice in the room for architectural decisions. Taking full ownership of our infrastructure stack - lead initiatives for our infrastructure stack and make decisions that balance short-term execution with medium and long-term scalability. Setting the strategic direction for engineering quality - develop and embed a culture of robust, automated testing that ensures quality for our customers, and enables us to stay lean. Building new and maintain existing backend services with a focus on performance, reliability and scalability. Mentoring and providing technical guidance to engineering team members, promoting best practices in coding, testing, and architecture. What Were Looking For
Youll do well in this role if, you are someone with: Low-ego and humility, our most valued characteristic and key to our teams success to date. A growth mindset, and a healthy comfort with ambiguity An ability to work with an element of playfulness that unlocks creativity, and also ensure the reliability, security and compliance standards our customers deserve. A great attitude who is always looking for ways to be involved and improve our products. Passion for helping and teaching your colleagues, customers and partners. Intrinsic motivation that loves the idea of building core infrastructure that will make education more accessible and affordable for decades to come. Your Experience
We recognize not everyone will meet all of the criteria. If you meet most of the criteria below and youre excited about the opportunity and willing to learn, wed love to hear from you. 8+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong background in backend development, product engineering, and cloud infrastructure. Minimum 3 years of experience at a senior level. 3+ years of experience building APIs and architecting/building backend systems at scale. Demonstrated success of owning/managing large-scale backend infrastructure and cloud infrastructure management (AWS, Terraform, messaging queues, etc), and CI/CD. Experience managing and organizing multiple ongoing projects at once. Experience in a technical leadership role leading software projects involving multiple engineers. Expertise in JavaScript/TypeScript and Node.js and/or Ruby on rails. Extensive experience with REST APIs. Experience with GraphQL, WebSocket, etc is nice to have. Advanced knowledge of Postgres and/or other relational databases. Experience with other database systems is a plus. Experience with modern testing frameworks and practices including API testing. Knowledge of security best practices in financial services. Strong organizational and prioritization skills. Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively within a remote team via tools like Slack, Notion, and Linear. Nice To Haves
Experience with authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth, JWT) or techniques such SAML, SSO, etc. Knowledge of algorithms and protocols for securing data, including TLS/SSL, digital signatures, hashing, and encryption. Experience in monitoring and observability and running a production application at scale. Have experience building applications from scratch. Domain knowledge in payment processing, identify/auth, or finance. Experience working in Fintech, the financial services industry, or at early/pre-seed start up. Compensation & Benefits
Salary The salary range for this role is $200,000 - $250,000 Equity Competitive Equity Package Benefits
Medical, dental, and vision health care plans Health care FSA/HSA plans 401K Commuter benefits PTO & 10+ Public Holidays Backpack Recharges - dedicated team time off to recharge Location
New York City, NY or Austin, TX. In-office 3-5 days (hybrid). Interview Process
We value transparency. Here is what you can expect: Initial interview with hiring manager or co-founder - 30-45 mins Second interview with co-founder (CEO/COO) or hiring manager - 30-45 mins Coding Assessment - ~60 mins Virtual or in-person onsite, including: Technical interviews Meeting the Backpack team Reference calls (2 references; at least one direct manager) Accommodations
We are committed to providing an accessible interview process. If you need any accommodations during any point in the interview process, please let us know and well work with you to better accommodate your needs. We look forward to hearing from you! We cannot wait to hear from passionate, driven and talented people that are excited about our mission. We are building a first of its kind fintech company to completely revolutionize an entire asset class and, eventually, how all Americans pay for their education. We acknowledge that this is a big ask list so even if there are a couple of missing pieces, we strongly urge you to still apply. Seniority level
Mid-Senior level Employment type
Full-time Job function
Engineering and Information Technology Industries Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at Backpack by 2x Location
New York, NY (US) various positions #J-18808-Ljbffr