Principal Backend Engineer

Summary

Join Flatfile, a rapidly growing post-product market fit startup, as a Backend Engineer and play a crucial role in shaping our data exchange platform. This exciting role offers broad scope, impacting various aspects of our platform, from AI integration to performance optimization and new feature development. You will lead and guide internal teams, own feature delivery, and contribute to critical incident response. The ideal candidate possesses extensive experience in backend technologies, distributed systems, and software development lifecycle. Flatfile offers a competitive salary, equity, comprehensive benefits, and a 100% remote work environment.

Requirements

• 10+ years experience in a production environment, with significant contributions to the design, architecture, and optimization of distributed systems
• Expertise in backend technologies, specifically Node, Postgres, and Redis
• Demonstrated capability to innovate and optimize at the system level
• Led all phases of software development, including ideation, product specification, prototyping, designing, and implementation. This role has a mix of both hands-on development as well as lead/architecture work
• A proven track record of raising the bar for technical standards, performance, reliability, and operational excellence

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services that power our scaling data exchange platform
• Provide leadership and guidance to internal team members on the implementation of architecture and system designs
• Developing and enhancing complex data structures to support enterprise use cases
• Own feature delivery from solution design to product operation and iteration
• Implement strategies to minimize data mapping errors, improve data accuracy, and establish performance benchmarks to ensure exceptional system performance
• Improve usability through refined micro-interactions and interface design, as well as developing AI-powered features to assist users in managing, analyzing, and resolving data issues
• Share responsibility for responding to critical incidents as needed. Like all other teams, we are responsible for the reliability of the systems we build
• Contribute to, enable, and implement new AI models and features in partnership with our Applied AI team
• Fix bugs (of course)

Preferred Qualifications

• You don’t want to own decisions on how to approach technical problems and expect a lead or manager to make the final call. Our leads and managers provide feedback, but you will ship what you build and be accountable for it
• You refrain from engaging in or find it challenging to handle debates about the future state of products. We need someone who can have an opinion yet remain open-minded
• You prefer to avoid challenging the status quo or pushing the boundaries of technical possibilities, as this role demands continuous learning and adaptation to new technologies
• You’ve never worked in a fast-paced environment. We move quickly, and if you get frustrated when priorities change rapidly, we’re not the place for you

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, vision, and dental insurance for you and your dependents
• 401k match. 100% matching for up to 3% and a 50% match for the next 2%
• Equity options for all full-time employees
• 100% remote work environment
• Flexible paid time off, with a recommended minimum of 3 weeks
• $10,000 home office makeover with personal access to an interior designer
• $150 per month toward cell phone and wifi
• The best tools to do your work, including a Mac laptop and top-of-the-line hardware
• 24/7 access to a Health Advocate & free annual membership to One Medical
• 12 weeks of paid family leave