Back-end Software engineer

Build the infrastructure powering the future of gaming commerce.

About Athena

Athena is building the operating system for gaming commerce.

Founded in 2025 and headquartered in Bengaluru, Athena helps businesses access gaming gift cards, digital vouchers, and in-game currencies through a single API-first marketplace. Our partners include Paytm, Razorpay, and Pine Labs, and our catalogue spans 200+ gaming titles including Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Roblox, Valorant, and more.

In just four months, we've delivered over 400,000 digital products and are growing 30% month-over-month.

We're still early, which means every engineer has the opportunity to influence architecture, product direction, and company outcomes, not just write tickets.

Why This Role Matters

We're at a stage where engineering speed directly impacts business growth.

Every new marketplace integration, payment flow, catalog expansion, automation, and platform capability depends on the strength of our backend systems.

We're looking for a backend engineer who thrives in startup environments and wants to own meaningful systems end-to-end. Someone who can move quickly, make sound technical decisions, and help us accelerate our speed to market without compromising reliability.

If you enjoy solving real-world scaling challenges, building systems from scratch, and shipping frequently, you'll fit right in.

What You'll Build

• Design and develop scalable backend services using Node.js and TypeScript.
• Build APIs that power our marketplace, partner integrations, payments, and internal tooling.
• Architect systems that handle increasing transaction volumes while maintaining reliability and performance.
• Own projects from idea to production, including design, implementation, testing, deployment, and monitoring.
• Work closely with founders, product, and frontend teams to rapidly launch new features.
• Improve platform performance, security, observability, and developer productivity.
• Solve challenging problems around payments, digital commerce, catalog management, and transaction workflows.

Contribute to technical decisions that shape the future architecture of the company.

What We're Looking For

Must-Have

• 2+ years of hands-on backend development experience.
• Strong experience building production applications using Node.js and JavaScript.
• Good working knowledge of TypeScript.
• Experience with Express.js, Nest.js, or similar backend frameworks.
• Strong understanding of REST APIs and distributed systems.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, or similar databases.
• Solid understanding of system design, scalability, performance optimization, and security.
• Experience working in startups or high-growth product companies.
• Ability to work independently and take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience in fintech, payments, wallets, transaction systems, or marketplaces.
• Experience integrating payment gateways and third-party APIs.
• Exposure to cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability tools.

Who Will Thrive Here

You'll likely enjoy Athena if you:

• Prefer shipping products over attending meetings.
• Like owning problems end-to-end.
• Are comfortable operating with ambiguity.
• Enjoy startup environments where priorities move fast.
• Want your work to directly influence company growth.
• Care about writing clean, scalable code without overengineering.

What We Offer

• Ownership from Day One.
• Opportunity to influence core architecture and engineering culture.
• Competitive compensation.
• Potential equity participation.
• Direct access to founders and key business decisions.
• A high-trust, high-impact environment where strong execution gets rewarded.