--- title: 'Senior Backend Engineer, Member Experience at Raya' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-member-experience-raya-remote-kthfw491fyv4' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-09' --- # Senior Backend Engineer, Member Experience at Raya - **Company:** Raya - **Location:** Remote - **Compensation:** $180k–$240k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-06-02 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/raya/675d586b-d156-45ed-9d13-ba1e8dcddd49 ## Job description Senior Backend Engineers at Raya love building and operating server software and have been recognized as leaders in past roles! The ideal candidate will have had 6+ years of experience and grown within their organization, demonstrating both results and leadership. You will join the backend team at an impactful time of high growth. We prioritize learning and teamwork and love giving people the opportunity to champion solutions to big challenges and grow into better versions of themselves. A great candidate is excited to support the backend team's initiatives. They are diligent and they design software architecture in a scalable manner. Finally, they believe in Raya’s vision, which is to enrich lives by fostering relationships through quality, in person interactions. We offer comprehensive medical and dental coverage, $50 a day food delivery budget, equity based employment, a great culture, learning opportunities, unlimited vacation, 12 weeks paid parental leave, and we pay all employees $1,000 a year to go somewhere in the world that they’ve never been because of our values of human connection, empathy, and curiosity. Responsibilities: - Product Ownership: Collaborate, build, and lead key components of our Raya backend services - Collaboration: Work hand-in-hand with cross-functional teams, ranging from UX designers to data scientists, ensuring our solutions are comprehensive and user focused - Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest in Raya's tech ecosystem, ensuring our solutions are scalable, maintainable, and innovative - User-Centric Development: Prioritize and advocate for top-tier user experiences, utilizing feedback loops and data-driven methodologies to define and refine product features - Operational Excellence: Navigate the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), ensuring agile methodologies, CI/CD practices, and Raya's best practices are integrated into all development phases Qualifications: - 6+ years of hands-on experience in modern software development environments, with a track record of delivering scalable and maintainable systems - Demonstrated expertise in system design, architecture, and mastery in Node.js and Typescript - Proven experience in building and scaling backend systems in production at a startup or fast-moving environment - Production Apple StoreKit Payments/Subscriptions experience - Production Stripe Payments/Subscriptions experience for a B2C product - Enthusiasm around new AI tools and frameworks - and a willingness to quickly adopt emerging best practices What Sets You Apart: - Visionary: You think beyond the present, anticipating future technological trends and their implications on the Raya Community. - Empathetic Leader: You naturally resonate with colleagues, users, and collaborative teams, fostering a culture of understanding and innovation - Growth-oriented: You possess a perpetual learner's mindset, open to challenges, and always seeking opportunities to expand your technical horizons - Impact-driven: With a knack for identifying the 'big picture', you prioritize tasks that maximize impact, aligning with Raya’s overarching goals - Productivity-obsessed: You value tools, workflows, and habits that maximize team velocity. - Bias toward shipping and iteration: You're able to build quickly, learn, and refine in short cycles ## About Raya ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Raya is a private, membership-based community platform where people around the world can connect and collaborate to find life partners, friends, and professional opportunities. - **Entity Type**: Private (Pre-Seed funded, 2016) - **Headquarters**: Los Angeles, California, United States - **Founded**: 2015 - **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Technology, Information and Internet - **Target customers**: B2C – Adults seeking a trusted, curated social networking experience - **Mission or purpose statement**: To create a trusted online community where people feel comfortable finding life partners, friends, and work collaborations, and to bring these interactions into the real world. ## Products & Services - **Raya App**: A membership-based social community platform that uses an application process with algorithmic assessment and anonymous committee input to curate its user base. Members pay a monthly fee and are expected to follow rules of respect, trust, and privacy. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available - **Key Metric**: Total Funding – At least one Pre-Seed round ($1.6M led by Atlas Finance Group in Dec 2016) and another round in June 2019 (details undisclosed). Additional investors include Dreamers VC, Analog Ventures, Section 32, X&Management, and Niche Capital. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Atlas Finance Group, Dreamers VC, Analog Ventures, Section 32, X&Management, Niche Capital - **Growth Signals**: Headcount of ~101 employees, with a **yearly growth of +38.6%**. Workforce distributed across 15 countries. Active job postings are up **+33.3% year-over-year**, indicating expansion. ## Competitive Advantages - **High Curation/Exclusivity**: Raya’s strict application process (with referrals and committee review) creates a highly selective, trust-based community that differentiates it from mass-market social networks. - **Community-First Culture**: Strong emphasis on member behavior and shared values; low report rate (~1 in 11,000 connections) signals a high-quality user experience. - **Privacy & Trust**: Strict policies against hate, excessive wealth display, and disrespect, creating a safe environment for genuine connections. ## Strategic Focus - **Global Expansion**: Raya has openings in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, and Mexico City, and is actively growing its engineering and product teams. - **AI & ML Integration**: The company has a dedicated Head of Machine Learning, AI, and Data, and uses algorithms to assess applications and improve the community experience. - **Product Development**: Active hiring for Product Managers and Senior Backend Engineers suggests investment in new features (e.g., "Places") and scaling core infrastructure. ## Why Work Here - **Career Growth**: Fast-growing company (+38.6% YoY headcount) with opportunities to take on ownership in engineering, product, and AI/ML roles. - **Global & Remote-first Culture**: Fully remote roles available, with global hubs and a diverse team across 15 countries. - **Technical Challenges**: Work on complex systems for recommendations, member experience, and internal tools using a modern stack (Python, Node.js, Kubernetes, MongoDB, TensorFlow, Looker, dbt). - **Culture**: Described as a "family of talented individuals" devoted to fostering human connection through technology. - **Location Flexibility**: Remote roles; hubs in major cities worldwide. ## Sources 1. [rayatheapp.com](https://www.rayatheapp.com/about) 2. [rayatheapp.com/careers](https://www.rayatheapp.com/careers) 3. [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/rayatheapp) 4. [Lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/raya) 5. [CBInsights](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/raya) ## Other roles at Raya - [Quality and Release Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/quality-and-release-manager-raya-remote-4kzqb5hmatpk) - [Server Engineering Manager, Member Experience](https://feeny.ai/job/server-engineering-manager-member-experience-raya-remote-gbxfa0qmj3tn) - [Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Internal Tools](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-full-stack-engineer-internal-tools-raya-remote-796srqpyyy3m) - [Senior Backend Engineer, Core Discovery](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-core-discovery-raya-remote-v7b4gnnvm0r3) - [DevSecOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/devsecops-engineer-raya-remote-fr0v9vb4zc6d)