Senior Backend Engineer

Role overview

Senior Backend Engineer (backend-first) at Nametag, designing and scaling systems behind the identity verification and account protection platform.

Responsibilities

• Backend & systems design:
  • Design, build, and operate backend services and APIs for identity verification, account recovery, and account protection workflows.
  • Own database schema design, migrations, query performance, and data integrity.
  • Build and harden authentication, authorization, and data-protection systems.
  • Design for correctness under load (e.g., idempotency, safe retries, failure handling, observability).
  • Contribute to architecture decisions and technical roadmap.
• Product engineering:
  • Partner with product and design to ship secure, usable customer-facing workflows.
  • Build internal tools and dashboards for operational visibility and developer workflows.
  • Make clean integration decisions across frontend, backend, third-party APIs, and customer systems.
• Production ownership:
  • Operate what you build; debug production issues across services, data, infrastructure, and user flows.
  • Improve reliability, performance, testing, deployment, and observability.
  • Review code, mentor peers, and raise the technical bar.

Requirements

• US work authorization required (no current or future visa sponsorship).
• 5+ years building and operating production backend systems.
• Strong backend experience with Node.js, Go, Python, Java, or similar.
• Experience designing APIs/services for real customers or high-scale internal systems.
• Strong relational database experience, with PostgreSQL preferred (schema design + query optimization).
• Hands-on cloud experience; AWS preferred.
• Familiarity with authentication/authorization, identity, security, or fraud/abuse prevention.
• Ability to work across the stack when needed, ideally with React, Vue, or similar.
• Clear communication and good judgment in a remote, cross-functional team.

Bonus points

• Experience with identity, authentication, account recovery, fraud prevention, fintech, security, or compliance-heavy products.
• Experience with OAuth, SAML, SSO, JWTs, access control, or secure account workflows.
• Experience in an early-stage/high-ownership environment.
• Strong production incident, observability, or reliability experience.

What they value

• High ownership and proactive problem-solving.
• Strong technical judgment.
• Speed with care (move quickly without compromising trust/security).
• Kindness and integrity.