Top Backend Engineer Jobs in San Francisco, CA

The Back-End Engineer will design and build core platform services, operate production services, and work on AI-powered features while collaborating with cross-functional teams and mentoring junior engineers.

Lead the technical direction and architecture of the Foundations platform team, owning authentication, authorization, SSO, secrets management, tenancy, and core platform services. Design APIs, drive services through launch, make technical decisions, establish engineering standards, and mentor engineers without formal management authority. Partner with engineering and product leaders to align execution with priorities.

Build reusable backend platforms and developer-facing tooling for performance testing, analysis, reporting, and AI-assisted engineering workflows. Enable service teams to independently incorporate performance testing into development and CI workflows through self-service capabilities, documentation, templates, diagnostics, and guidance. Partner with engineering teams, influence adoption, generalize solutions, and provide expertise on complex performance challenges.

Design and implement backend services, modernize legacy systems into microservices, ensure strong testing and production observability, and collaborate with Product and Engineering teams. The role requires independent project ownership, strong system design, AI-assisted development using tools such as Claude or Cursor, effective communication with nontechnical stakeholders, and adaptability in an ambiguous, fast-changing environment.

Leads cross-team backend initiatives and technical architecture for GitLab’s Core DevOps platform. Responsibilities include modernizing a monolith, establishing service, API, data, security, testing, and observability standards, guiding Go and Kubernetes practices, supporting Rust adoption, participating in incident response, mentoring engineers, reducing technical debt, and advancing AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Lead backend architecture and deliver reusable solutions, unblock engineering teams across the development lifecycle, drive complex design and bug fixes, set code review standards, mentor engineers, collaborate on company-wide projects, and make technical decisions balancing correctness, performance, and customer impact.

Design, implement, and maintain scalable, secure, high-performance backend systems and public-facing APIs. Collaborate with Product and Data Science teams, lead initiatives improving efficiency and system performance, and support customer satisfaction. Work may involve distributed systems, pricing engines, identity management, authentication, authorization, API versioning, deprecation, and rate limiting.

Designs, builds, and scales backend services and integrations for payments, billing, identity, and partner connectivity. Sets technical vision and architecture for distributed systems, leads cross-team delivery, manages production rollouts, builds fault-tolerant services and data pipelines, and mentors engineers. The role partners with product, design, and engineering teams to deliver frequent, reliable improvements for Flex’s rent payment platform.

Design, build, and scale backend services and integrations for payment, billing, identity, and partner systems. Own API scoping, design, implementation, deployment, and production operations with minimal oversight. Build fault-tolerant systems, data pipelines, and scalable architectures while collaborating with product, design, engineering, and external partners. Contribute to reliability monitoring, observability, automation, technical standards, and mentoring in a distributed team.

Design and build scalable services, APIs, platform capabilities, and product features. Own architecture and technical decisions, improve reliability and engineering practices through testing and operations, collaborate cross-functionally, mentor engineers, and help guide team direction.

Build and scale backend data platforms and services for real-time loan origination and financial reporting. Lead quarterly delivery, guide engineers, define technical plans, collaborate with product and design partners, improve reliability and operational practices, monitor service metrics, participate in on-call support, uphold engineering quality standards, and mentor team members. The role requires developing highly available distributed systems and scalable data pipelines using technologies such as Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Kubernetes, Spark, and Airflow.

Build and operate Go-based automation for PostgreSQL provisioning, configuration, upgrades, failover, scaling, and decommissioning at GitLab.com scale. Develop a PostgreSQL-as-a-service platform, integrate cloud infrastructure and infrastructure-as-code tooling, improve database performance and reliability, and create safe upgrade automation. The role includes production ownership, architecture leadership, code reviews, documentation, cross-team collaboration, mentorship, and using AI agents in engineering workflows.

Design, develop, launch, and maintain scalable backend systems and APIs used by merchant and partner integrations. Collaborate with engineers and stakeholders, balance speed with system quality, debug code, conduct code reviews, and write tested, extensible software. The role requires experience with distributed systems, Python or Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, and Kubernetes, along with strong communication and ownership of professional growth.

Leads software engineering projects and developer teams building distributed microservices and cloud-based backend solutions. Collaborates with product managers, mentors engineers, evaluates code, and addresses regulatory and customer needs. Uses technologies including Java, Python, Go, Node.js, SQL, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, relational databases, and NoSQL databases while staying current with emerging technologies and AI tooling.

Develop and operate backend systems supporting post-transaction processing for Affirm Card. Break down projects, write tested and extensible code, collaborate with product and engineering teams, monitor system health, troubleshoot issues, participate in on-call support, and contribute to code reviews and team development.

Design, build, and operate backend services for Bestow’s insurance platform using Python, Go, Java, and PostgreSQL. Collaborate on technical decisions, integrations, carrier onboarding, and scalable platform capabilities. Mentor engineers through reviews and pairing, improve production reliability and observability, participate in on-call support, and communicate technical decisions in a remote-first environment. Use agentic AI coding tools daily and help establish effective AI-assisted development practices.

Provides cross-team technical leadership for complex backend initiatives, modular architecture, monolith modernization, API and platform standards, production operations, and AI-assisted engineering adoption. Designs shared patterns for services, data, eventing, security, testing, observability, deployment, and reliability. Partners with Product and Engineering leadership, mentors engineers, participates in incident response, and drives technical strategy without formal authority.

Build, test, ship, and operate production backend features with minimal guidance. Design APIs, background jobs, integrations, data models, migrations, and bounded services while maintaining security, performance, observability, and reliability. Review code, improve automated testing, investigate production issues, address technical debt, participate in operational support, and collaborate asynchronously with product, frontend, infrastructure, and security teams. Use AI coding tools responsibly by validating and correcting generated output.

As a Backend Engineer, you will design and optimize backend services, APIs, and data processing, collaborating with leadership and users.

Build enterprise-grade authentication, authorization, and identity features across the full stack. Design and implement RBAC, provisioning (SCIM), SSO/OAuth integrations, secure public APIs, and admin workflows for auditing and compliance. Own end-to-end product changes, collaborate on architecture, and mentor engineers to deliver scalable, reliable systems for enterprise customers.

Nourish seeks a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and maintain backend services, collaborate with teams, and enhance engineering processes. Responsibilities include product development, codebase management, and driving improvements for scalability.

Owns delivery of backend money movement and card ledger systems, leading engineers through complex problems and ambiguity. Collaborates with product, design, analytics, and engineering stakeholders; defines scalable technical solutions; supports system availability, monitoring, on-call operations, code quality, and engineering standards. The role also includes mentoring and developing team talent while building highly available distributed systems for Affirm’s financial products.

Leads architecture and hands-on development of scalable backend systems and APIs supporting real-time applications. Owns the engineering lifecycle, writes high-performance code, establishes testing and reliability practices, resolves production issues, guides technical roadmaps, collaborates cross-functionally, and mentors engineers. The role requires expertise in object-oriented backend development, distributed cloud systems, automated testing, system monitoring, and technical leadership.

Design and build distributed backend systems for Salesforce’s agentic product setup platform. Develop a reusable agent framework, composable skill APIs, evaluation infrastructure, retrieval capabilities, and production-grade software. Establish system context and engineering standards while evaluating code for security, correctness, quality, and performance. Collaborate on AI agent, LLM, semantic search, and structured data solutions.

Develop and launch backend software supporting Lyft’s airport operations and real-time communications. Responsibilities include designing and maintaining tested code, leading features from concept through deployment, participating in code reviews and on-call rotations, troubleshooting production issues, explaining technical tradeoffs, and managing project priorities and deliverables in a collaborative cross-functional environment.