Software Engineer, Backend Developer

Position: Staff Software Engineer
Location: New York

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a specialized talent firm dedicated to helping companies build exceptional teams. We partner closely with our clients to deeply understand their needs, then connect them with top‑tier candidates who are highly skilled and the right fit for the company’s culture and vision. Our mission is simple: place the best people in the right roles to drive long‑term success for both clients and candidates.

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Job Title:

Staff Software Engineer

Location:

Remote or Hybrid – New York City, Washington D.C., or San Francisco Bay Area

Company Stage of Funding:

Venture‑backed technology company

Office Type:

Hybrid (occasional travel as needed)

Salary:

Competitive (full range shared during process)

1. Company Description

We’re representing a high‑growth technology company building the network for trusted trade. Through an AI‑powered product network, this team enables governments and businesses to strengthen global economic resilience, enhance security, and keep trade flowing across borders.

This is a mission‑driven environment centered on creating world‑scale impact. The engineering team builds the platforms, APIs, services, and core architectures that power this vision. The system is fundamentally driven by AI, scales across massive datasets, and serves a diverse global customer base. Engineers collaborate closely with data scientists to analyze global economic signals, unlock new insights, and deliver powerful APIs and workflows that bring the product to life.

2. What You Will Do

In this role, you will play a central part in building and evolving complex, high‑scale systems that sit at the core of the platform’s functionality. You will design and ship backend and data‑centric solutions while guiding technical quality across the team.

• Translate product requirements into technical requirements and iterative design plans.

• Work closely with a product manager to build implementation plans aligned to technical roadmaps.

• Maintain, develop, and deploy backend services that power the platform’s architecture.

• Analyze technical challenges and recommend scalable, efficient solutions.

• Automate, test, and deploy your own work and support the team’s deployment practices.

• Review code and technical designs with a focus on high engineering standards.

• Mentor other developers and support their technical growth.

• Drive the day‑to‑day engineering excellence of a team, ensuring roadmap‑aligned progress.

• Lead technical decision‑making to produce maintainable, high‑quality solutions.

• Identify technical and operational gaps and create plans to address them.

• Serve as the domain expert for part of the product surface area while maintaining broad technical fluency.

• Collaborate with leads and managers to maintain team focus, alignment, and sustainable delivery.

3. Ideal Background

The ideal candidate thrives in complex environments, values engineering excellence, and brings deep backend and data engineering experience.

• BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

• 7+ years of professional experience building backend or data‑driven software in demanding production environments.

• Experience deploying production code and services to cloud‑hosted environments.

• Proven ability to deliver iterative releases from proof‑of‑concept to MVP to production.

• A self‑starter comfortable working on large, ambiguous problem spaces.

• Strong commitment to clean code, scalable design, and technical craftsmanship.

• Experience taking ownership of existing codebases and continuing to evolve them.

• Ability to prioritize effectively and maintain focus on high‑impact areas.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Experience leading engineers on complex projects.

• Experience with Python machine learning toolsets (Num Py, Pandas, Dedupe).

• Experience with container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.

4. Preferred

While not required, experience with the following technologies is highly beneficial:

Languages:

Python, Py Spark

Tools:
Docker, Git, Kubernetes, Swagger/OpenAPI, AWS/Azure, MLFlow, Celery

Data Platforms:
Databricks, Delta Lakes

5. Compensation and Benefits

Salary: $170,000 –…