---
title: 'Staff Backend Engineer at Astra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-backend-engineer-astra-new-york-dsxw7e5ts3a8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Staff Backend Engineer at Astra

- **Company:** Astra
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-06-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/astra/51505047-17d3-4d1b-aef0-e35141a02dd7

## Job description

## ABOUT ASTRA

Astra is a high-impact engineering team building mission-critical financial infrastructure. Our fintech platform powers payment processing, fraud detection, and financial compliance for businesses handling 100M+ in weekly transaction volume. We maintain 99.9%+ uptime, process complex cross-border payments, and coordinate with multiple third-party financial services while meeting strict regulatory requirements.

## THE ROLE

We're looking for a Senior/Staff Backend Engineer to architect and build complex financial systems that process millions of dollars daily. You'll be one of our core engineers designing cross-domain solutions that coordinate payments, fraud detection, compliance, and user management across our distributed microservices architecture.

This role requires deep systems thinking, technical leadership, and the ability to solve complex engineering challenges that span multiple domains and external integrations.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Architect Critical Financial Systems: Design and implement payment processing, fraud detection, and compliance systems that handle millions of dollars daily with strict regulatory requirements
- Lead Cross-Domain Solutions: Coordinate complex interactions between payments, fraud detection, user management, and compliance systems
- Drive Technical Decisions: Lead architecture decisions that impact our entire platform and establish best practices for a growing team
- Mentor Engineers: Guide junior engineers and establish coding standards, design patterns, and engineering practices
- Optimize System Performance: Improve reliability and performance across our distributed microservices architecture
- Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with product and compliance teams to design systems that meet business and regulatory requirements

## WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Staff Backend Engineer Requirements

- 8+ years of software engineering experience building complex, production systems
- 3+ years of technical leadership experience (mentoring, architecture decisions, cross-team coordination)
- Demonstrated systems engineering experience solving complex, cross-domain challenges
- Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and computer science fundamentals
- Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices

Education

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required
- Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering from an accredited university highly preferred

Technical Skills

- Backend Development: Python (we use Python 3), strong understanding of web frameworks and APIs
- Database Design: Experience with NoSQL and SQL databases
- Cloud Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform, or similar cloud platforms
- Architecture Patterns: Domain-driven design, clean architecture, CQRS
- System Design: Ability to design systems that balance performance, maintainability, and business requirements

## Preferred Experience

- Financial Systems: Payment processing, fraud detection, or compliance systems
- Financial Regulations: Understanding of AML, KYC, PCI DSS, or similar regulations
- Banking Integrations: Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems
- High-Scale Systems: Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes
- Third-Party Integrations: Experience coordinating multiple external service integrations

## 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
- Architecture Influence: Lead technical decisions that will scale with our business
- Complex Problems: Work on sophisticated challenges that few engineers get to solve
- Team Building: Establish engineering practices and culture from the ground up
- 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 shapes our platform
- Professional growth - lead technical decisions and mentor team members
- Modern tech stack - work with cutting-edge cloud technologies
- Mission-driven - build systems that power financial innovation

## 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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