About the role

Role Overview

Staff Backend Engineer (Senior/Staff)

Architect and build complex financial systems that process millions of dollars daily. You will lead cross-domain solutions coordinating payments, fraud detection, compliance, and user management across a distributed microservices platform.

Key Responsibilities

Architect and build financial systems handling payment processing, fraud detection, and compliance.
Lead cross-domain solutions by coordinating interactions between payments, fraud detection, user management, and compliance services.
Drive technical and architecture decisions that impact the entire platform and establish best practices for a growing team.

Requirements

Deep systems thinking and ability to solve complex engineering challenges across multiple domains and integrations.
Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices.
3+ years of technical leadership (mentoring, architecture decisions, cross-team coordination).
Strong algorithms, data structures, and computer science fundamentals.
8+ years of software engineering experience building complex, production systems.
System design skills balancing performance, maintainability, and business needs.
Backend development in Python (Python 3) with strong knowledge of web frameworks and APIs.
Cloud infrastructure experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or similar.
Database design experience with NoSQL and SQL databases.
Architecture patterns: Domain-driven design, Clean Architecture, CQRS.
Banking/financial integrations experience with financial APIs and money movement systems.
Understanding of AML, KYC, and PCI DSS (or similar regulations).
Experience with high transaction volume systems.
Ability to coordinate third-party integrations.
Education: Bachelor’s required; Master’s in CS/Engineering preferred.

Nice-to-haves / Focus Areas

Mission-critical financial infrastructure experience (payments, fraud detection, compliance).
Strong capability across performance, reliability, and maintainable platform design.

About Astra

Astra is building mission-critical financial infrastructure, focusing on high-scale backend systems for payments and risk/compliance workflows. The company operates a distributed microservices architecture that coordinates multiple financial domains such as fraud detection, compliance, and user management.