Senior Backend Engineer

Location: New York, NY (Remote friendly; applicants must be based in the United States or Canada)

What is Spade?

Financial institutions process billions of transactions daily across cards, ACH, wires, and third-party aggregators. Most data is difficult to use due to inconsistent descriptions, mismatched merchant names, and varying categories by payment type. Spade is a data and AI platform that transforms messy transaction strings into structured, verified records and provides tools for authorization, attribution, analytics, and AI initiatives. Spade leads the market in merchant coverage, matching accuracy, geolocation data, and transaction enrichment speed. Customers include FIS, Bilt, Mercury, Stripe, and other fintech and financial services leaders. Spade is a fast-growing Series B company backed by Oak HC/FT, a16z, Flourish Ventures, Y-Combinator, and Gradient Ventures. The team values diversity of background and opinion with a culture emphasizing empathy, curiosity, passion, autonomy, and ownership.

What will you do?

Collaborate on technical vision to build a product customers love
Develop and maintain low-latency, massively-scalable developer-facing APIs and a robust data platform supporting the data science team
Design and implement systems supporting product and company growth
Debug production issues across all stack levels
Bring a strong collaborative approach to deliver value to customers and internal stakeholders

What experience, skills, and qualifications are necessary?

Remote allowance: This position is remote friendly with an option to come to an office if in the NYC area. Only open to applicants based in the United States or Canada. Must-have:

6+ years of experience building and scaling backend Python-based systems in fast-paced environments
Proven capability developing REST APIs and writing performant SQL
Experience building using AWS infrastructure
Experience building systems from scratch with autonomous execution in early-stage environments
Customer-focused mindset with strong problem-solving skills; ability to navigate ambiguity while delivering value
Collaborative mindset with ability to be mentored; focus on personal growth trajectory

Nice-to-have:

Proficiency in Django
Familiarity with data science/analytics tools such as Pyspark, Databricks & Delta Lake, Hex
Experience with cloud infrastructure/tools like AWS CDK
Experience with transaction, merchant, and/or location data
Interest or experience in fintech or data products

Why join Spade?

Be a cultural founder: play a meaningful role in defining/building company culture as an early employee
Get in on the ground floor: small but well-funded team offering limited risk & unlimited upside
Build next-generation financial infrastructure powering innovation in fintech for better consumer products/services

Benefits include:

Competitive compensation & equity package
Full medical, dental & vision benefits for US-based employees
Life & short-term disability insurance
Unlimited PTO
Early exercise program & extended post-termination exercise period
401K retirement planning
Hybrid team with pet-friendly NYC headquarters
Paid parental leave
Work from home stipend

Diversity & Inclusion at Spade:

Spade is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity equity & inclusion. They believe diverse backgrounds/experiences/perspectives build better products and teams.

Salary Range:

Total compensation includes salary + equity + benefits. Compensation considers experience breadth/years interview performance market dynamics & internal equity. Anticipated base salary range: $200000 - $220000 plus equity grant.