Backend Software Engineer

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 not only highly skilled but also 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.

https://www.recruitingfromscratch.com/

Title of Role
: Backend Software Engineer

Location
: San Francisco, CA (On-site)

Office Type
: On-site, Full-Time

Salary
: $100-400k base (based on experience) + Equity

Company Description

We are defining the future of work. We partner with leading AI labs and enterprises to provide the human intelligence essential to AI development.

Our vast talent network trains frontier AI models in the same way teachers teach students: by sharing knowledge, experience, and context that can't be captured in code alone. Today, more than 30,000 experts in our network collectively earn over $2 million a day.

We are creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society.

We are a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.

Payments is the core infrastructure of our marketplace, not a back-office function. As our AI systems scale to evaluate, place, and compensate millions of workers across geographies, we are investing in making our financial systems deterministic, observable, and resilient because the models that route talent are only as good as the infrastructure that pays them. In a matter of months, we've gone from moving hundreds of thousands of dollars to hundreds of millions across our platform: what used to work at $200K won't work at $200M.

The Team You Will Join

The mission of the Payments group is to be the financial and commercial backbone of the company.

We ensure that:

• Money moves deterministically and reliably at scale
• Failures are surfaced proactively, not reactively
• Ledger, payout, and settlement systems are observable end-to-end
• Root causes are fixed, not patched
• Automation replaces manual intervention wherever possible

We operate at the intersection of Engineering, Finance, Product, Ops, and Fraud. Our mandate is to transform payments from manual orchestration into resilient financial infrastructure.

The Role

This role exists to help build the financial backbone that supports the next 1000x. We are looking for a senior engineer to help harden and scale our payments platform.

You will work on:

• Flow-level observability across payout → settlement → reconciliation
• Reliability engineering for distributed payment systems
• Instrumentation and monitoring of financial primitives (ledger, payout orchestration, settlement ingestion)
• Automation to eliminate manual treasury and payout workflows
• Root-cause driven system redesign
• This role requires someone who understands that payments infrastructure is both a technical and financial system, where correctness matters as much as uptime.

Why This Is a Big Role

We’ve grown from ~$200K in payment volume to ~$200M in a short window. The systems weren’t designed for this scale, and that’s exactly why this role matters. If you like building planes mid-flight, this will feel familiar. We are no longer building “payment features.” We are designing sustainable financial infrastructure for a rocketship. If that sounds energizing, keep reading.

What You’ll Actually Do

You’ll be working at the core, scaling the core systems used by thousands of experts working on the frontier of AI.

That means:

• Automating payout orchestration (no more human-triggered scripts)
• Building a real operational ledger (immutable, auditable, boringly correct)
• Designing settlement ingestion + reconciliation pipelines
• Improving observability across payout → processor → bank flows
• Eliminating recurring payment bugs at the root cause
• Reducing manual treasury overhead
• Abstracting processor dependencies so we’re not locked in

If you want to join a rocket ship and build the systems that let it keep accelerating, this is that role.

What We’re Looking For

We are seeking engineers who embody an operational mindset and system-level thinking, prioritizing reliability, correctness, and automation.

- Experience & Domain Expertise:
5+ years in building scalable backend systems, with a strong preference for experience in high-stakes domains such as payments, fintech, billing, or financial infrastructure.
- Must Haves:
- Backend Expertise:
3+ years of industry experience in backend/platform engineering (or equivalent), including ownership of production systems.
- Payment Infrastructure Expertise:
Demonstrated ability to integrate with and manage third-party payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, Adyen) and/or direct banking APIs.
- Compliance and Security:
Understanding of financial regulations, including adherence to PCI-DSS, and the secure handling and encryption of sensitive banking and customer data.
- Technical Proficiency:
3+ years of professional experience building around:
- transactional databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL
- compiled languages like Go, Rust, or C++
- Experience with message queues or streaming platforms (e.g., RabbitMQ, SQS, Kafka).
- distributed systems frameworks like temporal, k8s, etc..
- Operational Excellence:
Proven ability to manage and operate production systems under significant load. This includes balancing the velocity of development with maximum reliability, evidenced by a commitment to detailed observability and sophisticated payment agents.
- Mindset:
Comfortable working with high intensity in fast-growing, ambiguous environments. Thinks in terms of systems and strategic solutions, not just individual tickets.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base cash comp from $100K-$400K
• Generous equity (4-year vest)
• $20K relocation bonus
• $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
• $1K monthly meal stipend
• Free Equinox membership
• Health, dental, and vision insurance