Backend Engineer

💼 Job Description

Chariot is building a first-of-its-kind identity and payment network for nonprofits. Our systems already process billions of dollars, so we’re past the point of proving our products work and onto the harder and more exciting problem of building something durable. It’s a specific and exciting moment to join our Engineering team: we’re small enough that your judgment and opinions matter greatly, yet stable enough that you’re building rather than firefighting.

If you're looking for a job where tickets arrive fully specced, your scope ends at the API boundary, and someone else decides what's worth building, do not apply. You will not be happy here.

But if you want to own systems end to end, work directly with leadership, advocate for about what we build and not just how we build it, and be progressed as far as your aptitude and ability allows, this might be the right fit. We move fast, ship a lot, and we care a lot about taste and quality because nonprofits and donors deserve it.

What you’d do:

• Manage and build out the backend server applications and components that comprise the Chariot platform that power our various product offerings.
• Contribute to the architecture and design of our APIs, backend systems, and applications and help define team standards and best practices.
• Generate ideas for new initiatives and technologies.
• Improve real-time and analytical monitoring and alerting capabilities for us to better understand our user behaviors and iterate on our product.
• Communicate effectively with founders, product managers, and other software developers.
• Work directly with founders, product, and the rest of engineering: we don't route decisions through layers.
• Manage and execute against project plans and delivery commitments within an Agile/Scrum environment.

🧠 How Chariot’s Engineering Team Works

• Strong opinions, loosely held. We're an opinionated team, and we love healthy debates, whether at whiteboards or around the table (a benefit of working 4 days a week in-office). It’s not about being “right.” What’s valued at Chariot is being able to defend your reasoning, but then be willing to change course if a different solution is best for the company.
• Engineering isn't siloed. Engineers here understand the business and the product deeply, not just the spec. You'll be in conversations about what we should build and why.
• We put a premium on intellectual curiosity. The engineers who do best at Chariot are constantly ideating and pursuing learning. That’s why we have an engineer-run book club, celebrate anyone who contribute to our Product/Engineering blog with long-form writing, and encourage engineers to think about problems adjacent to their work.
• We write to think. Anyone at Chariot can open an RFC (Request for Comments) to sharpen a strategic or product decision and pull in the team's input. We like to tell stories and believe in the power of perception and articulation in forming and testing new ideas.
• Pod structure with high ownership. Engineering work is organized into cross-functional pods of 2-4 engineers. Each pod owns its work end to end: they prioritize, scope, set their own milestones, and commit to them.
• You'd be surrounded by builders. Roughly a third of Charioteers are former founders. We hire for people who spot a problem worth solving and take it, which is what makes the autonomy we’re talking about here come to life. Side quests are encouraged!
• Engineers have a prominent voice. Engineers present the projects they own to the entire company at BOD (beginning of day) meetings and Monthly Reviews.

👤 About You

• 4+ years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages (note: we are hiring for multiple open roles across different levels).
• 2+ years of relevant work experience as a backend application developer building performant and scalable backend systems.
• Bachelor’s Degree, ideally in a technical field, but we understand great engineers come from all sorts of different backgrounds and also consider relevant work experience.
• Be highly proficient working with Go, Node, Docker, Terraform, and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Postgres (RDBMS), REST APIs, and gRPC.
• Strong sense of responsibility; ability to drive a project from inception to completion.
• Experience with fintech, payments, and the nonprofit-sector is a plus.
• Experience building secure and scalable applications on AWS is a plus.
• You're curious past the boundaries of your own work: the payments domain, the nonprofit sector, how the business actually makes money.