Principal Backend Engineer, Push

The role

You will lead the technical direction and architecture of Push, a regulated non-custodial on-ramp and off-ramp. You will build backend systems for banking integrations, payments, identity, compliance and blockchain settlement, and lead the engineering team.

What you will do

• Own the technical direction and architecture for Push across backend services, external integrations, data flows and onchain settlement
• Translate product, regulatory and operational requirements into an engineering roadmap and technical decisions
• Design and build resilient services for on-ramp and off-ramp transaction lifecycles
• Lead integrations with open-banking, payments, identity, compliance and blockchain infrastructure providers
• Define secure boundaries between fiat systems, non-custodial wallets and onchain execution
• Set and uphold standards for secure development, architecture review, testing, observability, incident response and on-call
• Partner with Product, Compliance, Legal, Security, Operations, Finance and application engineers
• Remain hands-on in the codebase for complex architecture, high-risk changes and critical production issues

Required qualifications

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience, including senior technical leadership of production systems and teams
• Experience designing distributed, event-driven systems that move or account for real money
• Experience with regulated financial products and balancing compliance with product goals
• Strong backend programming skills
• Strong knowledge of API design, PostgreSQL or another relational database, messaging systems and service-to-service integration patterns
• Experience in regulated fintech, payments, banking, digital assets or another environment requiring auditability and controls
• Excellent system-design judgement, including migration strategy, build-versus-buy decisions and security boundaries
• A track record of leading engineers through ambiguous, high-impact work while staying close to implementation and production operations

Nice to have

• Production experience with Rust
• Experience with Go, Java or C++ can substitute for Rust

About the company

Aave Labs built the Aave Protocol, described as the world's largest and most trusted onchain lending market. The company builds products that expand access to lending, credit and savings globally.