Backend Software Engineer

Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid, 4 days/week in-office)

Salary: $140K - $180K + Competitive Equity

About the Opportunity

The company is building an AI-native platform transforming how consumers engage with debt resolution and payments at scale. Their infrastructure powers millions of communications daily and supports over $1B in debt across a rapidly growing platform used by leading receivables and collections organizations.

They’re looking for a Backend Software Engineer to help architect and scale the core systems behind the platform — from high-throughput microservices and event-driven infrastructure to AI-enabled workflows and agent tooling.

This is a high-impact engineering role where every service you build directly influences revenue, platform reliability, and engineering velocity. You’ll work closely with product and engineering leadership in a lean, fast-moving environment where ownership is expected and execution speed matters.

What You’ll Do?

• Design and build scalable backend microservices primarily in Go powering a platform processing millions of daily communications and transactions

• Own database architecture and write high-performance SQL queries with strong focus on schema design, indexing, optimization, and data integrity

• Collaborate directly with product stakeholders to translate ambiguous business requirements into clear technical solutions and scalable systems

• Build AI-enabled platform capabilities including LLM integrations, MCP tooling, agent workflows, and retrieval-based systems

• Operate within a modern cloud-native infrastructure stack leveraging AWS, Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, and Terraform

• Use AI aggressively in your engineering workflow — the team are heavy users of Cursor, Claude, and Copilot to accelerate development velocity

• Contribute to architectural decisions, scalability planning, observability, and engineering standards across the platform

What Sets This Role Apart?

• Direct ownership of systems operating at meaningful scale in a compliance-critical environment

• Opportunity to work on AI-native backend infrastructure rather than superficial AI wrappers or internal experiments

• Small, high-performing engineering team where strong engineers have outsized influence on architecture and execution

• Rare combination of product ownership, distributed systems engineering, and applied AI development

• Fast-growing Series A environment with strong momentum, meaningful customer traction, and significant technical challenges to solve

• Competitive compensation and equity with room for rapid growth as the company scales

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in backend software engineering building scalable production systems

• Strong experience building and owning microservices end-to-end in high-volume environments

• Hands-on expertise with SQL including schema design, indexing strategies, and query optimization

• Experience working in regulated industries such as fintech, payments, healthcare, or other compliance-heavy domains

• Strong product and systems thinking with ability to independently define technical requirements and edge cases

• Experience using AI coding tools such as Cursor, Copilot, or Claude as part of your daily engineering workflow

• Experience with AI/LLM integrations, MCP tooling, agent systems, or retrieval-based architectures is highly preferred

Preferred Background

• Combination of startup and larger company experience

• Experience operating systems handling millions of daily transactions, messages, or events

• Strong familiarity with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native infrastructure

• Comfortable operating in high-ownership, fast-paced environments with minimal bureaucracy

Tech Stack

Go (Golang), PostgreSQL, AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, IAM, CloudWatch), Kafka, Elasticsearch, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Python, Linux

Additional Information

• Hybrid role based in Austin, TX (4 days/week in-office, Wednesdays remote)

• Visa sponsorship available for select visa categories; new H-1B sponsorship not available

• Strong preference for engineers who enjoy ownership, ambiguity, and building scalable systems from the ground up

About Sperton

Sperton is a global recruitment and consulting firm with offices across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We help companies find and manage top talent across borders, delivering fast, compliant, and flexible recruitment, consultant hiring, and global mobility services.