Kikoff · 2 weeks ago
Senior Backend Engineer - Grant Underwriting and Payment
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
5+ years expKikoff is a FinTech unicorn revolutionizing financial access through intelligent cash advance products. The Senior Backend Engineer will join the Grant Core team to scale critical systems for underwriting decisions, payment processing, and collection strategies.
CreditFinanceFinancial ServicesFinTechPersonal Finance
Responsibilities
Own and scale our multi-rail payment systems (ACH, RTP, card networks) to handle transaction volume while maintaining 99.99% reliability
Design and build scalable backend services that can handle millions of transactions with low latency and high throughput
Optimize our Sidekiq job infrastructure to efficiently process complex workflows for underwriting, collections, and payment distribution
Lead architectural decisions for our core financial systems, balancing speed, reliability, and cost as we scale
Build robust data pipelines that power our ML models and real-time decision engines
Work closely with our product and data science teams to ship features that directly impact our customers' financial wellbeing while maintaining the highest standards of reliability and security
Qualification
Required
5+ years of experience with modern backend frameworks and a track record of building and scaling production systems
Strong systems design skills - you've architected and shipped distributed systems that handle high throughput and maintain data consistency
Production experience with background job processing systems (Sidekiq, Resque, or similar)
Solid understanding of database optimization, caching strategies, and performance tuning
Preferred
Experience with payment systems, financial infrastructure, or regulated environments (ACH, card processing, real-time payments)
Track record of making infrastructure decisions that balance technical excellence with business pragmatism
Experience working with ML/data science teams to productionize models and algorithms
Background in fintech, payments, or lending infrastructure
Strong system observability mindset (metrics, logging, tracing, monitoring)
Technical Leadership: Ability to own complex technical initiatives end-to-end, from design through implementation and rollout
Mentorship: Help level up the team through code reviews, design docs, and technical guidance
Impact Focus: Balance technical perfection with pragmatic delivery - you know when to build for scale vs. ship fast
Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner effectively with product, data science, and operations to deliver customer value
Operational Excellence: Take ownership of the reliability and performance of the systems you build
Benefits
Medical, dental, and vision coverage - Kikoff covers the full cost of health insurance for the employee!
Meaningful equity in the form of RSU's
Flexible vacation policy to help you recharge
Competitive pay based on experience consisting of base + equity + benefits
Company
Kikoff
Kikoff provides credit building services through secured cards and rent reporting.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Kikoff has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (16)
2024 (8)
2023 (5)
2022 (2)
2020 (2)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$42.5MKey Investors
Portage VenturesLightspeed Venture Partners
2021-06-10Series B· $30M
2020-07-01Series A· $10M
2019-11-18Seed· $2.5M
Leadership Team
Kevin Otsuka
VP of Growth
Patrick Glover
Head of Operations
Recent News
Morningstar.com
2026-01-01
Foundation Capital
2025-12-24
Company data provided by crunchbase