Staff Backend Engineer

Backend Engineer

Employment Type: Full-Time Location Type: Remote (U.S. only) Salary: [Salary information not provided]

Position Overview

Astra is building modern infrastructure for moving money, offering APIs and automation tools for real-time transfers, bank debits, card disbursements, and more. Our platform is designed for observability, reliability, and scale. We are seeking a backend engineer with strong system design experience and a high level of ownership to help shape the core of Astra’s platform, including our global ledger, orchestration layer, and customer-facing APIs. You will collaborate closely with product, compliance, and operations to deliver reliable systems that move and reconcile millions of dollars daily. This role is ideal for individuals who thrive in early-stage environments and are eager to build foundational systems from the ground up.

Responsibilities

• Design and own key backend systems, including payments orchestration, ledger primitives, and internal operational flows.
• Help evolve our service architecture as we scale, focusing on financial state modeling, authentication management, and retry mechanisms.
• Write clean, well-tested Python code using Flask and GCP-managed services.
• Collaborate closely with other engineers, product, and cross-functional teams to understand customer needs and deliver robust APIs and features.
• Contribute to our observability, reliability, and deployment workflows.
• Participate in code reviews, technical planning, and mentoring.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience building backend systems in production.
• Strong system design and architecture skills, with a proven track record of designing scalable and evolving services.
• Expertise in Python and API design; experience with Flask or similar frameworks is essential.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, asynchronous processing, and idempotency.
• A product-minded approach, with a passion for building platforms that handle real-world constraints such as money, compliance, and reconciliation.
• Comfortable taking projects from ideation to implementation with minimal oversight.

Bonus Points

• Experience with GCP, Terraform, payments/fintech, or event-driven architectures.

Our Tech Stack

• Languages: Python (Flask/FastAPI), TypeScript (React)
• Infrastructure: GCP (App Engine, Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks, BigQuery, Datastore, GCS), Terraform
• CI/CD & Monitoring: GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Cloud Logging
• Data: BigQuery, Datastore, GCS

Why Join Astra?

Astra is a remote-first company tackling complex challenges in financial infrastructure. We aim to make money movement programmable, transparent, and scalable, from real-time money movement to chargeback automation and reconciliation. As an early engineer, you will have significant ownership over architecture and systems that directly impact customer experiences, with your work going into production and shaping our platform for years to come.

Company Culture & Remote Work

Astra is a remote-first company hiring exclusively within the U.S. We foster a culture of thoughtful collaboration, clarity, and initiative. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.

Application Instructions

[Application instructions not provided]