---
title: 'Backend Engineer at Astra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/backend-engineer-astra-united-states-e62y5cqzkbsv'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-21'
---

# Backend Engineer at Astra

- **Company:** Astra
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $125k–$160k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-21
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/astra/c34d486b-4fc9-4c24-8a18-577fcd6d5194

## Job description

## About Astra

Astra is building mission-critical infrastructure for moving money at scale. Our platform processes billions in annual transaction volume with 99.9%+ uptime, powering real-time transfers, bank debits, card disbursements, and complex financial compliance systems. We provide APIs and automation tools that enable businesses to move money programmatically while maintaining strict regulatory requirements.

## The Role

We're looking for a Backend Engineer to build and ship features across the financial systems that move real money every day. You'll join a small team of experienced engineers working on our distributed microservices architecture, taking on features across payments, fraud detection, compliance, and user management from design through production.

This role is for an engineer who already delivers independently and is ready to take on broader scope. You'll work on larger, cross-domain problems, get real exposure to architecture decisions, and grow quickly in a domain where correctness and reliability matter.

## What You’ll Do

- Own features end to end: Design, build, test, and deploy backend features and services across payments, fraud, compliance, and user management, then run and monitor what you ship
- Integrate with financial partners and APIs: Build and maintain integrations with banks, card networks, and other third-party services, handling the edge cases that money movement demands
- Contribute to design: Write and review technical designs for your own work, participate in architecture discussions, and learn how our domain-driven, event-driven approach fits together
- Improve performance and reliability: Find and fix bottlenecks and failure modes across our microservices, and help raise the quality of our tests and observability
- Collaborate across teams: Work closely with product and compliance to turn business and regulatory requirements into working software

## What We’re Looking For

Required Experience

- 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building production backend systems
- Track record of delivering features independently, from ambiguous requirements to production, with sound judgment on when to ask for help
- Solid foundation in algorithms, data structures, and computer science fundamentals
- Working experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or microservices
- Ability and willingness to travel up to ~15% annually

Education

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. We care more about demonstrated ability than credentials.

Technical Skills

- Backend development: Python 3 and web frameworks and APIs (we use Flask)
- Databases: Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases
- Cloud infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform, or similar cloud platforms
- Architecture patterns: Familiarity with domain-driven design, clean architecture, and CQRS is a plus

## Preferred Experience

- Financial systems: Payment processing, fraud detection, or compliance systems
- Financial regulations: Familiarity with AML, KYC, PCI DSS, or similar regulations
- Banking integrations: Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems (ACH, card networks)
- Third-party integrations: Experience building and maintaining integrations with external services
- Scale and reliability: Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes

## Why This Role Matters

- Direct impact: You'll be a big part of a small engineering team building systems that power a growing fintech platform
- Complex problems: Work on sophisticated challenges that few engineers get to solve
- Room to grow: A path to broader scope and, over time, technical leadership as the team scales
- Financial innovation: Build systems that enable new financial products and services

## What We Offer

- Competitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company.
- Remote-first culture with flexible working arrangements
- Small team, big impact — your work directly supports Astra’s ability to scale responsibly
- Mission-driven — build infrastructure that powers financial innovation while meeting the highest regulatory standards

Remote Work and Culture Astra is a remote-first company hiring only within the U.S. We value thoughtful collaboration, clarity, and initiative. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.

How to Apply

- We're looking for engineers who are excited by complex systems problems and have the educational background and experience to handle sophisticated challenges.
- If you're passionate about building mission-critical financial infrastructure and want to have a direct impact on our technical direction, we'd love to hear from you.

## About Astra

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Astra provides a vertically integrated API platform for developers and product teams to embed real-time, instant payments (bank account and card transfers) into their products.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A; total funding of $44.9M per LinkedIn, $51.67M per CB Insights – conflicting reports)
- **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States (with additional offices in San Francisco and Brazil)
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Gil Akos (CEO), Zach Nolan (CTO), Sam Morgan (COO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Payments / Fintech Infrastructure
- **Target customers**: B2B – developers, product teams, fintechs, banks, and e‑commerce companies
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Transforming the financial system, one transfer at a time” by making payments faster, more secure, and radically better for businesses and consumers.

## Products & Services
- **Enhanced ACH**: Faster settlement via ACH rails while leveraging the universality of ACH for payment sources.
- **Instant Disbursements**: Real‑time transfers from bank accounts to debit cards (powered by Visa Direct).
- **API Platform**: Simple, embeddable API that enables instant transfers between bank accounts and cards, including account funding and disbursements.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue $8.5M (LinkedIn estimate); Total Funding $44.9M (LinkedIn) or $51.67M (CB Insights – conflicting reports)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Nyca Partners (lead in venture round), Slow Ventures (lead in pre‑seed), FPV Ventures (lead in Series A), Alumni Ventures, Treville Capital Group, Cross River Bank (partner), Visa (partner)
- **Growth Signals**: 29.6% YoY employee growth (LinkedIn), processed over $100M annualized instant transfer volume and 650K+ instant transfers, named to GGV Capital’s Embedded Fintech 50 list

## Competitive Advantages
- Vertically integrated platform (owns the rails from bank to card) enabling real‑time settlement.
- Partnerships with Visa (Visa Direct) and Cross River Bank provide deep infrastructure and regulatory support.
- Developer‑first approach with SDKs, libraries, and sandbox for fast integration.
- High responsiveness and customer support as a core differentiator.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue building the default developer platform for money movement.
- Expand globally with a diverse suite of payment solutions (globally inclusive).
- Maintain a bias for speed and real‑time capabilities while managing risk and compliance.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote‑first** model: “Work your way” with flexibility.
- **Benefits**: 100% health/dental/vision insurance premium coverage (50% for dependents), 401k with 100% match on first 3% and 50% on next 2%, generous PTO, paid parental leave, monthly tech stipend.
- **Engineering culture**: High performance, optimism, customer‑first, and real‑time bias. Team size ~17 (with ~11% technical) and growing.
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapid headcount growth (+29.6% YoY), backed by top fintech investors, and processing significant transaction volume.

## Sources
1. [astrafi.com/careers](https://astrafi.com/careers/)
2. [linkedin.com/company/astrainc](https://www.linkedin.com/company/astrainc)
3. [astrafi.com/about](https://astrafi.com/about/)
4. [cbinsights.com/company/astra-1](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/astra-1)
5. [theorg.com/org/astra-finance](https://theorg.com/org/astra-finance)

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