Senior Backend Engineer (4-5 years)

THE ROLE

This is not a promotion title for a mid-level developer. This is for the engineer who decides how systems are structured — who owns architecture, not just implementation within it.

You'll work directly with the CTO and product leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into system design. You'll define scope, propose architecture, own decisions end-to-end, and be accountable for outcomes.

If you've always worked within someone else's architecture, this isn't the role. If you've been the person who defines that architecture — keep reading.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

• System architecture: service design, inter-service communication patterns, event-driven design, and data modeling — independently, from first principles

• Technical requirement gathering directly with product and business stakeholders — you define scope, not wait for a spec

• AWS infrastructure architecture: compute, networking, data layer, and delivery

• Real-time financial data pipelines on Kafka are critical to our core product

• Data layer design across PostgreSQL (relational/transactional) and MongoDB

• Backend engineering standards the rest of the team follows

• Build vs. buy decisions with documented, defensible tradeoff reasoning

WHAT SENIOR MEANS HERE

• You've designed distributed systems end-to-end — not just contributed to someone else's design

• You lead technical discussions with non-technical stakeholders; you don't wait for a ticket to start thinking

• You identify over-engineering in your own work and in others — and course-correct without prompting

• You make confident architectural decisions with incomplete information and articulate your tradeoffs clearly

• You've shipped systems you designed, not just systems you inherited

REQUIRED STACK

Node.js · AWS · Kafka · PostgreSQL · MongoDB — all required in production

REQUIREMENTS

• 4–5 years of backend engineering; minimum 2 years in architecture-owning roles

• All stack technologies used in production environments — not side projects

• Product company background — not services, outsourcing, or agency

• Based in Bangalore or willing to relocate immediately

YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF

• Small team dynamics give you energy — less process, more ownership

• You're comfortable being the most accountable person for technical calls

• You treat over-engineering as a problem, not a signal of seniority

• Regulated or data-sensitive environment experience

YOU'LL STRUGGLE HERE IF

• You need architectural direction before you can start

• You've been technically strong but have always deferred design decisions upward

• You've never led stakeholder conversations to define technical scope

WHY NOW

Stack Wealth is approaching Series A. The systems you design will scale with the company. The technical foundations you lay today will define the platform for the next three years.