Senior​/Backend Engineer

About Blackbird:

Blackbird Labs is a loyalty and payments platform establishing meaningful connections between the world’s best restaurants and their customers.

Served up in 2022 by Ben Leventhal, co‑founder of Eater and Resy, Blackbird offers a fully customizable loyalty programming platform for restaurants and a consumer app designed to make every guest feel like a bonafide VIP no matter where they dine. Backed by Union Square Ventures, a16z, Amex Ventures, Variant Fund, and other forward‑thinking investors, Blackbird is out to revolutionize the restaurant industry.

At Blackbird, our values guide everything we do and our talent principles define the key traits we seek in our employees.

We have passion for our product – committed to our mission and instinctively think like and go the extra mile for our customers. We are elite performers – striving for excellence, going above and beyond to achieve exceptional results, and learning quickly with horsepower, drive, and grit. We make others better – taking initiative to elevate others, giving and receiving feedback, and championing a culture of growth.

We hold one another accountable to living out our talent principles as we march together to achieving our mission.

At Blackbird, we believe every guest should feel like a VIP the moment they walk into a restaurant. Whether it’s last‑minute tables, welcome drinks, off‑menu items, or exclusive perks, we’re building a platform that helps restaurants identify, connect with, and reward their guests in meaningful and personalized ways.

Our vision? The more you check in at your favorite spots, the more you unlock—from unique rewards to seamless direct messaging for reservations. With each visit, you’ll earn $FLY, our universal rewards currency, which you can use across our network of outstanding restaurants.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you’ll be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining our core APIs. You’ll work closely with product managers, designers, and fellow engineers to define and execute the technical vision behind our payments and loyalty platforms. You’ll contribute to key architectural decisions, help establish engineering best practices, and play a critical role in scaling the platform. We’re looking for someone who thrives in a fast‑paced, high‑ownership environment and is excited to build products from the ground up.

• Design, build, and maintain core backend APIs
• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering peers to deliver features aligned with business goals
• Contribute to system architecture and implement scalable, robust solutions
• Uphold and promote backend best practices, with a focus on code quality, testing, and performance
• Mentor junior and mid‑level engineers and foster a collaborative, growth‑oriented team culture
• Participate in product and design discussions, offering backend perspectives on implementation and feasibility

• 5+ years of experience building and deploying backend APIs
• Strong proficiency in Kotlin or another statically typed JVM language
• Deep experience designing and maintaining RESTful APIs using domain‑driven design principles
• Solid understanding of SQL databases, including schema design and performance tuning
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to delivering high‑quality user experiences
• Ability to work autonomously and make sound decisions in a fast‑moving environment
• Experience mentoring engineers and contributing positively to team culture
• Comfortable working cross‑functionally with product, design, and other stakeholders

• Experience with the Spring framework and database abstraction layers such as Hibernate
• Familiarity with the U.S. payments ecosystem, including debit, credit, and ACH processing
• Exposure to Dev Ops practices, including AWS infrastructure and Terraform
• Interest or experience in blockchain, especially with cryptography fundamentals
• Experience product ionizing generative AI features (e.g. retrieval‑augmented generation, prompt engineering, or model integration)

Depending on your work location and experience the target annual salary for this…