Senior Backend Engineer (Generalist)

Location: New York, NY
Company Stage of Funding: Series A DeFi Infrastructure Startup ($44M Raised)
Office Type: Hybrid (4 Days Per Week Onsite)
Salary: $220,000–$275,000 Base + Equity + Annual Bonus

Company Description

We're representing a profitable, venture-backed infrastructure company building some of the most widely used products in decentralized finance. The team is behind one of the leading decentralized exchanges on the Solana blockchain, having processed more than $70 billion in trading volume while also operating as one of the ecosystem's most active on-chain market makers.

Backed by leading investors including Haun Ventures, Paradigm, and Electric Capital, the company is expanding its engineering organization as it builds the next generation of high-performance financial infrastructure, including decentralized exchanges, perpetual futures, and Layer 2 blockchain technology. This is an opportunity to work alongside engineers from organizations such as Stripe, Jane Street, Akuna Capital, Solana Labs, and other world-class engineering teams.

What You Will Do

• Design, build, and maintain high-performance backend infrastructure powering mission-critical financial systems.


• Architect scalable distributed systems with a strong focus on reliability, latency, and performance.


• Own complex engineering initiatives from system design through production deployment and long-term maintenance.


• Build production-grade backend services using modern systems programming languages including Rust, C++, Go, or Python.


• Collaborate closely with engineering leadership to define technical architecture and platform direction.


• Improve platform performance, scalability, and operational reliability across core infrastructure.


• Write clean, maintainable, and highly optimized code while establishing engineering best practices.


• Work across multiple technical domains in a fast-paced startup environment where ownership is highly valued.


• Participate in technical design discussions and mentor engineers through architectural leadership.


• Help build the infrastructure supporting the next generation of decentralized financial products.

Ideal Background

• 7+ years of experience building large-scale backend or distributed software systems.


• Strong computer science fundamentals with exceptional system design abilities.


• Proven experience leading complex engineering projects independently from architecture through production.


• Professional experience building production systems using Rust, C++, C, Go, Python, or TypeScript.


• Experience designing highly reliable, scalable backend infrastructure.


• Strong track record of ownership within high-performance engineering organizations.


• Stable career progression demonstrating increasing technical responsibility and leadership.


• Bachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, or a related technical field from a highly regarded university.

Preferred

• Experience building low-level systems such as databases, networking infrastructure, compilers, operating systems, or distributed platforms.


• Professional experience with Rust or a strong interest in adopting Rust.


• Familiarity with blockchain infrastructure, particularly the Solana ecosystem.


• Background in distributed systems, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, or systems programming.


• Experience at high-bar engineering organizations such as Stripe, Cloudflare, Databricks, Google, Meta, Jane Street, Citadel, HRT, Jump Trading, DRW, or similar companies.


• Interest in decentralized finance, financial infrastructure, or high-performance trading systems.


• Startup experience with significant ownership over technical architecture and platform development.


• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary: $220,000–$275,000.


• Competitive stock option package.


• Annual discretionary cash bonus and trading profit-sharing program.


• Flexible compensation mix with the ability to adjust cash versus equity.


• H-1B transfer sponsorship and Canadian TN visa sponsorship available.


• Hybrid schedule with four days per week onsite in New York City (Wednesday optional remote).


• Opportunity to join a profitable, well-funded infrastructure startup building one of the highest-volume decentralized exchanges in the industry.


• Work alongside elite engineers solving complex distributed systems and financial infrastructure challenges with significant technical ownership from day one.