---
title: 'Sr. Backend Engineer (Remote) at Mode Mobile'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-backend-engineer-remote-mode-mobile-remote-873cbc4ydp98'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Sr. Backend Engineer (Remote) at Mode Mobile

- **Company:** Mode Mobile
- **Location:** Remote
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-02
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://www.modemobile.com/open-role?gh_jid=8777975002

## Job description

Who We Are ([Mode.Inc](http://www.modemobile.com/))

Mode.Inc is the parent company of a portfolio of technology businesses, including Mode Mobile, the creator of EarnOS, a transformational software platform that turns ordinary smartphones into "EarnPhones". This innovation empowers users worldwide to monetize everyday mobile activities such as streaming, gaming, and shopping. We enable users to profit from their data and attention, rather than letting only tech giants benefit. What sets us apart is our inclusive approach, converting users into earners, facilitating over $150M in earnings and savings, and going a step further by turning earners into owners by awarding stock ownership in Mode.Inc based on their usage. We have attracted over 40 million users across 170 countries.

Mode Mobile, Inc. Ranked Number 1 Fastest Growing Company in North America on the 2023 Deloitte Technology Fast 500.

For additional insights, check out information about our reward-based super app, Mode Earn App, which also powers the reward engine for our proprietary smartphone, Mode Earn Phone.

## Our Team and Culture Drive Our Success

Our team is the heart of our culture.  We value innovation, collaboration, and curiosity, with a passion for getting things done.  We strive to hire and cultivate the best team members and foster a culture of open communication and transparency.  We are driven and hard-working but also committed to having fun along the way.  We allow OKRs to guide us, assume positive intent, sometimes agree to disagree and commit, honor our commitments, seek to accomplish more with less, and encourage everyone to speak up as our team owns our company’s success.

You can read more about our team and how we work [here](https://www.modemobile.com/team).

## The Role

We’re looking for an exceptional Sr. Backend Engineer to help build, scale, and evolve the backend systems powering our consumer-facing mobile products. You’ll architect reliable services, increase speed and resilience, optimize infrastructure, and unlock new features that help users achieve goals and earn points more effectively. You’ll architect reliable services, increase speed and resilience, optimize infrastructure, and unlock new features that help users achieve goals and earn points more effectively.

This is a hands-on, high-impact role ideal for someone who loves solving complex systems problems, building scalable APIs, and shipping features that directly impact product performance and user experience.

You will collaborate closely with product, design, data, and frontend engineering to deliver features through rapid development cycles and deployment.

## Who You Are and What You’ll Do

- Build & Scale Core Services
- Architect backend systems powering user workflows, notifications, and automation features
- Design APIs and microservices built for performance, efficiency, and scale
- Quickly learn and apply new technologies as needed
- Work with high-volume data systems and event-driven architectures
- Improve observability, monitoring, logging, testing, and alerting
- Identify performance bottlenecks and implement optimization strategies
- Build distributed systems with multiple services, queues, external APIs, and asynchronous data flows
- Ensure uptime, stability, and production resilience
- Build resilient integrations with third-party services
- Work in 2-week sprints with CI/CD and strong code quality practices
- Partner with product, data, and frontend to ship features
- Participate in system design and architecture reviews

## What You Bring to the Team

- 6+ years of backend engineering experience, ideally in consumer apps, mobile, or SaaS, with at least 2 years in a senior-level role
- Expert-level proficiency in Ruby on Rails, including modern versions and best practices (this is central to the role)
- Hands-on production experience with PostgreSQL, including schema design, indexing strategies, query optimization, and performance tuning
- Strong expertise with Sidekiq for background job processing, including scheduling, throttling, batching, and reliability patterns
- Proficiency using Redis for caching, job queues, and distributed locking
- Experience with DynamoDB or comparable NoSQL databases
- Solid background in API design, RESTful principles, versioning, and serialization
- Proven track record of integrating with third-party APIs and external services
- Experience designing, building, and scaling distributed systems in production
- Familiarity with AWS services, including S3, DynamoDB, SQS, CloudWatch, and SES
- Strong skills in testing, CI/CD pipelines, logging/monitoring, debugging, and performance optimization
- Ability to work in a fast-moving remote startup environment
- Preferred
- Experience building and supporting backends for mobile apps
- Experience creating internal tools or admin panels with ActiveAdmin
- Hands-on work with Shoryuken for SQS message processing
- Experience integrating payment processors like Stripe
- Nice to Have:
- Event-driven or streaming architecture
- AI-assisted/AI agentic development (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc.)
- Feature flagging, experimentation, or A/B testing
- Alignment with our core values:
- Accountable: You take ownership of your responsibilities, demonstrating trustworthiness and self-discipline. You are consistent in your work, transparent in your actions, and communicate effectively. You follow through on commitments and strive for continuous improvement.
- Action-driven: Identify what is most important, agree on scope, execute in a timely manner, and drive the greatest impact.  You take initiative, roll up your sleeves, and get things done.
- Caring: You genuinely care about yourself and others, our business and craft, our mission and vision, and are passionate in heart and mind. You understand the importance of our team and strive to create a positive, supportive work environment.
- Curious: You focus on the ‘why,’ learn and expand your knowledge, explore new ideas, and generally make things better.  You're a lifelong learner with a thirst for knowledge and a constant desire to improve.
- Thorough: Your work is thoughtful, impactful, timely, accurate, and complete.  You pay attention to detail, are meticulous, and ensure quality work and compliance.

## How You Work

- Take ownership and deliver reliably
- Quickly pick up unfamiliar technologies and move between systems
- Think beyond the code and care about product outcomes
- Communicate clearly, asynchronously, and proactively
- Value craftsmanship, testing, and system reliability
- Enjoy learning, improving, and making things better over time

We Believe in the Following Workplace Norms

- Allow OKRs to Guide Us
- Assume Positive Intent
- Agree to Disagree & Commit
- Set New Precedents
- Accomplish More with Less
- Hold Yourself & Others to High Standards
- Speak Up
- Be Resourceful
- Follow the 80/20 Rule

## What We Are Offering

- We are a 100% remote-first, global company.
- A competitive compensation package.
- We offer generous perks & benefits to team members.
- Participation in the Company's equity plan (for full-time team members).
- We provide individual bonuses in accordance with our Company Bonus Program.
- Work with energetic, passionate, and results-driven people.
- Celebrate team members' personal and work milestones.
- Remote social activities, including virtual coffee buddies.
- Bonusly - We usehttp://bonus.ly/Bonusly as a way to recognize and reward team members for their hard work and commitment.
- Weekly Wednesday Get Stuff Done Days (No Meetings).
- Open PTO, generous Company Holidays, and Wellness Days (for full-time team members).

If we just described you and your perfect role, we'd love to talk with you.  We have a lot to accomplish this year and look forward to making headway and creating success together!

Mode.Inc does not accept/pay fees for unsolicited resumes from third-party agencies/vendors.

Our company is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. We are committed to providing a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive environment for all team members.

## About Mode Mobile

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mode Mobile develops a proprietary rewards and monetization engine called EarnOS that powers Android-based EarnPhones and a suite of consumer mobile apps, with a mission to turn screen time into a source of income for everyday people.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Regulation A+ crowdfunding round currently open; $MODE ticker reserved on Nasdaq — intent to IPO within 18–24 months)
- **Headquarters**: Chicago, Illinois, United States
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Dan Novaes (Co-Founder & CEO) and Kiran Panesar (Co-Founder & CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Mobile software, consumer electronics, digital advertising, financial services, media
- **Target customers**: B2C (consumers who want to earn income from their smartphones); B2B (OEMs and carriers licensing EarnOS; advertisers and brands)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Make screen time a source of income for everyday people."

## Products & Services
- **EarnOS Engine**: Proprietary rewards and monetization software that runs on any Android phone, rewarding users for daily habits and activities (listening to music, playing games, shopping, etc.). Brands pay Mode when users interact with partner apps and services.
- **EarnPhone 2**: Android-based smartphone devices pre-loaded with EarnOS, available through national retail partners (Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart) and directly at modephone.com. Users can earn up to $1,200/year.
- **Mode Earn Club**: Premium subscription tier offering enhanced earning features and benefits.
- **Mode Money**: Financial services division providing curated investment opportunities for higher-net-worth investors.
- **Mode Media**: Owned and operated media engine reaching millions of newsletter subscribers across various verticals, plus a first-party advertising network for content distribution and monetization.
- **Mode Mobile Apps**: A growing portfolio of high-engagement consumer apps acquired and integrated with EarnOS to unify rewards, monetization, and data.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: $115M+ in cumulative company revenue (lifetime); $24.9M annual revenue (LinkedIn estimate); pro-forma EBITDA of $11.8M in 2025 (profitable). Company projects $103M revenue and $35M EBITDA in 2026, $200M revenue and $78M EBITDA in 2027.
- **Total Funding**: $75M+ raised to date ($72M from ~60,000 crowdfunding investors via Regulation A+ offerings)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Deloitte (ranked #1 fastest-growing software company and #2 overall on Deloitte Technology Fast 500 List of North America 2019–2022); national retail partners include Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart; media features on Fox News, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, Forbes, Business Insider, Morning Brew, Robinhood Snacks, 1440, NASDAQ, and FinTech TV at the NYSE.
- **Growth Signals**: Over 490 million users across 170+ countries; $1B+ earned and saved by users; 481% revenue growth from 2019–2022; 81% 3-year revenue growth; 38% yearly headcount growth; actively acquiring profitable app businesses with $1M+ in revenue.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover in "EarnPhone" category**: Mode is creating a new income-generating smartphone category, positioning EarnPhones as household staples alongside traditional smartphones.
- **Proprietary EarnOS technology**: Software can run on any mobile phone, with 11+ trademarks and patents in process, creating a defensible moat.
- **Diversified revenue model**: Revenue streams from digital advertising, hardware sales, subscriptions, financial services, and media — reducing reliance on any single source.
- **Massive user base and network effects**: 490M+ users across 170+ countries creates a large data and distribution advantage for licensing deals and advertiser demand.
- **M&A-driven growth strategy**: Actively acquiring complementary mobile apps and integrating them into the EarnOS ecosystem, compounding value.

## Strategic Focus
- **IPO preparation**: Reserved $MODE ticker on Nasdaq with objective to go public within 18–24 months from the Reg A 2026 offering.
- **OEM and carrier licensing**: Expanding EarnOS licensing to OEM and carrier partners to embed income infrastructure directly into billions of smartphones globally.
- **International expansion**: 75% of users are international, but 85% of revenue comes from U.S. users — significant international growth runway.
- **Continued acquisitions**: Scaling through acquisitions of profitable mobile apps with strong user metrics.
- **Product development**: New version of EarnPhone in development; continued investment in EarnOS features.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture and values**: Emphasizes being action-driven, thorough, accountable, curious, resourceful, and caring. Team is described as "data-driven engineers, product managers, designers, marketers, and more."
- **Remote-first**: Team works remotely around the world with members in the U.S., Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Poland, India, and more. Global collaboration is a core value.
- **Growth trajectory**: 38% headcount growth YoY; company achieved EBITDA profitability in 2025 and projects strong revenue growth ahead. Ranked #1 fastest-growing software company by Deloitte.
- **Employee rating**: 4.2/5.0 on LinkedIn (24 reviews) with Work-Life: 4.0, Compensation: 3.9, Culture: 4.2, Career: 4.1.
- **Current open roles (remote)**: Senior Product Manager, General Manager - Mode Market Research, Account Executive - Newsletter Sales.
- **Notable**: Company has donated over $250,000 worth of EarnPhones to charity through the Youngstown Community Food Center.

## Sources
1. [modemobile.com](https://www.modemobile.com/)
2. [modemobile.com/team](https://www.modemobile.com/team)
3. [modemobile.com/careers](https://www.modemobile.com/careers)
4. [helpdesk.modemobile.com - Investor FAQs](https://helpdesk.modemobile.com/hc/en-us/articles/40462555958036-Mode-Mobile-Overview-and-Investor-FAQs)
5. [linkedin.com/company/modemobile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/modemobile)

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