Staff Backend Engineer

Recruiting from Scratch is a specialized talent firm dedicated to helping companies build exceptional teams. We partner closely with our clients to deeply understand their needs, then connect them with top-tier candidates who are not only highly skilled but also the right fit for the company’s culture and vision. Our mission is simple: place the best people in the right roles to drive long-term success for both clients and candidates., * Design and build external-facing APIs that support customer workflows.

• Own backend integrations with a wide range of third-party systems and services.
• Translate product and customer requirements into reliable backend business logic.
• Build and improve API endpoints that are stable, scalable, and easy for customers to use.
• Improve database and query performance across backend systems.
• Work with relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL.
• Build asynchronous workflows and cloud-native backend services.
• Work with serverless and cloud technologies, including Lambda and EC2.
• Diagnose and resolve customer-facing technical issues.
• Improve platform reliability, performance, and operational stability.
• Collaborate with full-stack, data, ML, and DevOps engineers on scalable backend architecture.
• Own projects independently from technical design through production deployment and iteration.
• Contribute to making the platform easier to integrate with and operate at scale.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong backend engineering background.
• Meaningful experience building external-facing APIs.
• Experience designing and maintaining integrations with third-party systems.
• Strong fundamentals in system design, debugging, and problem-solving.
• Production experience with Python is preferred, though strong candidates from other object-oriented language backgrounds can be considered.
• Experience with serverless technologies, asynchronous workflows, and cloud infrastructure.
• Comfortable working with relational databases and optimizing queries.
• Strong understanding of backend reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Able to independently own projects and drive them to completion with limited oversight.
• Strong communicator who proactively surfaces blockers and keeps stakeholders informed.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment with experimentation and changing requirements.

Preferred

• Strong production experience with Python.
• Experience with PostgreSQL.
• Experience building integrations for B2B or enterprise software.
• Familiarity with distributed systems.
• Experience with LLMs or generative AI.
• Background in infrastructure-heavy or API-first software.
• Experience supporting customer-facing production systems where reliability and correctness are important.
• Startup or growth-stage experience with significant individual ownership.

• Base salary: $165,000-$225,000.
• Significant equity options package.
• Location: Remote within the United States.
• 20 days of PTO annually.
• Global company offsites.
• 100% covered PPO medical insurance for individuals and families.
• 100% covered dental and vision insurance for individuals and families.
• 401(k) with employer contribution regardless of employee contribution.
• Healthy living/gym stipend.
• Mobile phone stipend.
• Continuing education credits.
• Best suited for a backend engineer who enjoys APIs, third-party integrations, customer-facing technical problems, and owning reliable production systems end-to-end.

We’re representing a venture-backed AI company building professional-grade software for the insurance industry. Its platform helps insurers automate and improve critical workflows across underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution.

The company’s products are already in production with leading insurers, and the team includes talent from companies such as Facebook, Palantir, Google, Amazon, Uber, Mastercard, and McKinsey.

This role sits on the Client Integrations team and focuses on the external APIs and backend systems that connect the company’s platform to customer workflows and third-party services.