Travoom · 9 hours ago
Founding Principal Backend Architect (Rust)
500 W 2nd St, Austin, TX 78701, USA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
7+ years expTravoom is developing OleOle, a decentralized social network and messaging platform for football fans. They are seeking a Founding Principal Backend Architect who will design and own the core backend architecture in Rust, enabling real-time messaging, video, and commerce for millions of users worldwide.
Travel
Responsibilities
Designing and owning core backend architecture in Rust (async-first)
Defining service boundaries, data ownership, and evolution strategy
Designing scalable APIs (REST and/or GraphQL) for mobile and web clients
Modeling and operating PostgreSQL as a long-term source of truth
Architecting real-time systems (feeds, messaging, event-driven workflows)
Making tradeoffs around consistency, latency, and scalability
Working with DevOps while retaining backend architectural authority
Reviewing critical code paths and preventing premature complexity
Helping shape the backend team as the company grows
Qualification
Required
7–12+ years of professional backend engineering experience
Proven ownership of backend systems in production
Strong, real-world Rust experience (async systems, not experiments)
Deep understanding of PostgreSQL data modeling and performance
Experience designing APIs and explaining tradeoffs clearly
Experience building or evolving systems that had to scale
Ability to reason about architecture without hiding behind buzzwords
7-12 years of software engineering experience (preferably at early-stage startups or high-growth platforms)
4+ years of experience working in Rust in production environments, ideally on scalable web or blockchain-native backends
Strong experience designing modern, scalable backend architectures from scratch — including authentication, real-time messaging, microservices, APIs, caching, and database design
Proficiency with Rust frameworks like Actix, Axum, Tokio, or Rocket
Passion for decentralization, crypto, Web3, and building products that empower users
Comfortable working without product managers, defining scope, and leading engineering direction
Creative problem solver who can courageously propose and support new ideas to our organization. Not interested in best practices, lets build something better!
Ability to adapt. An ideal candidate will welcome the opportunity to solve a broad range of problems using a wide array of technologies
Comfortable with ambiguity, shifting priorities and general growing pains of an early-stage technology company
An exceptional entrepreneurial judgment that fosters independence over micro-management
Understanding of football and international sports a huge plus
Preferred
Experience with real-time systems (feeds, messaging, streaming)
Experience with high-write or high-fanout workloads
ETL / data pipelines
Media or video delivery systems
Token, wallet, or crypto-adjacent systems (non-blockchain core)
Experience with WebAssembly, gRPC, or GraphQL
Bonus: experience with blockchain integration, tokenomics, or building in no-fee marketplaces
Benefits
Founding engineer-level equity and token allocation
Deferred salary until funding is secured
Long-term ownership and technical leadership
A mission-driven, elite team with deep experience in sports, media, crypto, and startups
Company
Travoom
Travoom is an online marketplace that curates bucket-list travel experiences.
11-50 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageLeadership Team
Doug Knittle
CEO
Company data provided by crunchbase