Senior Backend Engineer, Core APIs

Ironwood Digital empowers developers to stop online fraud at the source. We work on turning radical new ideas in the fraud detection space into reality. Our products are developer-focused and our clients range from solo developers to publicly traded companies. We are a globally dispersed, 100% remote company with a strong open-source focus. Our flagship open-source project is Ironwood DigitalJS (27K stars on GitHub). We have raised $77M and are backed by Craft Ventures (previously invested in Tesla, Facebook, Airbnb ), Nexus Venture Partners (previously invested in Postman, Apollo.io, MinIO, Druva) and Uncorrelated Ventures (previously invested in Redis, Rollbar & Gradle). We have noticed a rise in recruiting impersonations across the industry, where scammers attempt to access candidates' personal and financial information through fake interviews and offers. All Ironwood Digital recruiting email communications will always come from the @fingerprint.com domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Ironwood Digital via other sources should be ignored. Senior Backend Engineer, Core APIs We are seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer to be part of the development of end-to-end fraud detection solutions for our API team. Your primary responsibility will be building highly performant backend systems and infrastructure that handle large-scale real-time data processing. This role requires strong experience and skills in backend software development, particularly focused on API development and scaling existing systems in both Go and Node.js. You will design and implement scalable, high-performance backend systems, ensuring smooth integration with other components. You'll take ownership of features from concept to final deployment, working closely with cross-functional teams to deliver reliable and robust solutions. A key aspect of this role involves a deep understanding of scaling distributed systems thereby allowing us to multiply our capacity safely and efficiently as our user base continues to grow rapidly. What you’ll do: Design, develop, and optimize backend systems for real-time data processing and web services. Work with cross-functional teams to integrate backend components with other services, ensuring performance and scalability. Conduct deep dives into problematic features, researching and analyzing their behavior to understand root causes and identify potential solutions. Develop hypotheses, run experiments, analyze results, and translate findings into actionable engineering improvements. Conduct performance tuning, debugging, and testing of backend systems to ensure reliability and efficiency. Foster a data-driven culture by sharing engineering best practices and collaborating on cross-functional projects. This role includes participation in a shared on-call rotation. The schedule will be communicated in advance, and we strive to balance coverage equitably while minimizing off-hours disruptions. Mentor junior developers, helping all team members grow in our mission, values and abilities. What you bring: 5+ years of experience in backend development Strong, demonstrated experience in GoLang and/or Node.js with a willingness to learn. Strong experience in designing, developing, and maintaining scalable backend systems. Experience with building and optimizing APIs, real-time data processing systems, and microservices architectures. Strong knowledge of SQL and experience with databases like DynamoDB, Redis, or Elasticsearch. Proficiency with general software engineering tools: Git, IDEs, shell scripting, CI/CD. Proficient in English for clear communication in a global, remote team. Ability to work independently on tasks while effectively collaborating as a team member. A strong desire to mentor and grow junior team members. Nice to Have: BS/MS in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent work experience. Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or AWS CloudFormation. Practical experience with analytical storage systems like ClickHouse, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or Databricks. Experience with observability tools like Datadog or other monitoring and logging platforms. Understanding of modern containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes. Experience with working with large open-source projects to address the needs of a wide variety of stakeholders as well as to demonstrate the ability to work and communicate asynchronously across a world-wide team. Demonstrated experience with both Node.js and Go in a backend context. Excellent understanding of Internet security & privacy mechanisms. Tools and Technologies: Backend development: Golang and NodeJS (Preferred), TypeScript, Express or equivalent. Data analytics/processing: ClickHouse, dbt. Compensation Range For US-based employees , the cash compensation range for this role is $150,000 – $200,000 . We set standard ranges for all US roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked a