Who We Are

About Backpack

Backpack is a payments infrastructure company building the first connected banking and payments platform for the $1.8 Trillion Higher Education market.

Our core platform is used by Universities, connecting information and money flows to facilitate the most complex payment types that represent a growing share of total tuition - already totaling hundreds of billions in annual volume.

As education becomes more expensive, students and their families are increasingly looking to a broader array of funding sources, including 529 college savings plans, outside/private scholarships, third-party sponsors, and family contributions - we are bringing these online by building the first payments system for these payment types.

Some Quick-fire Facts About Us

Raised $5M in venture funding from Walkabout Ventures and Mischief Ventures, as well as founders and executives from Plaid, SoFi, Brex, Chime, Square and many others. Have built the first connected banking platform in higher education with a team of six, already processing tens of millions in payment volume. Partnered directly with some of the country’s largest universities, including The University of Alabama and Miami University. Our mighty team of six is on a mission to build an entirely new payments system for Higher Ed which significantly reduces the ~$50BN in fees paid by student families every year, improving accessibility and affordability of education across the country.

About The Team

Our goal is to make external payments into universities shockingly simple and worry-free for students, families, universities, and funding organizations alike. Behind the scenes, this requires building sophisticated payment operations systems that handle complex money movement, automated reconciliation, and real-time visibility — all tailored to the specific needs of university bursars, financial aid teams, and external funders .

Our founding team has been brought together to ensure we have the best blend of experience to achieve this; from deep payments and technical expertise, to go-to-market and operations. We are a group of past operators and executives that have worked at technology companies like Uber and Google, FinTech companies like SoFi and Atlas, EdTech companies like Blackbaud and traditional financial services companies like UBS, KPMG and Accenture.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced software engineer based who is a hands on programmer and has a proven track record as technical leader who can architect scalable and robust backend systems.

You’ll write extensive code, contribute to the technical architecture and scalability of our platforms, and collaborate with stakeholders to build a generational education payment system.

What The Job Involves

Working closely with our founders, engineers, and operations to contribute to and enhance performance, security, and scalability for our products and business. Lead product critical projects and upgrades to enable new products and capabilities for our customers Help build and manage critical payment infrastructure, including developing testing and compliance frameworks to ensure reliability Build, optimize, and maintain CI/CD pipelines to support rapid and safe deployments Own monitoring, alerting, and incident response systems to ensure uptime and performance Building new and maintain existing backend services with a focus on performance, reliability and scalability.

What We’re Looking For

You’ll do well in this role if, you are someone with:

Low-ego and humility, our most valued characteristic and key to our teams success to date. A growth mindset, and a healthy comfort with ambiguity An ability to work with an element of playfulness that unlocks creativity, and also ensure the reliability, security and compliance standards our customers deserve. A great attitude who is always looking for ways to be involved and improve our products. Passion for helping and teaching your colleagues, customers and partners. Intrinsic motivation that loves the idea of building core infrastructure that will make education more accessible and affordable for decades to come.

Your Experience

We recognize not everyone will meet all of the criteria. If you meet most of the criteria below and you’re excited about the opportunity and willing to learn, we’d love to hear from you.

5+ years of experience in software engineering with a strong background in backend development, product engineering, and cloud infrastructure. Experience building APIs and architecting/building backend systems at scale. Demonstrated success of managing large-scale backend infrastructure and cloud infrastructure management (AWS, Terraform, messaging queues, etc), and CI/CD. Expertise in JavaScript/TypeScript and Node.js and/or Ruby on rails. Extensive experience with REST APIs. Experience with GraphQL, WebSocket, etc is nice to have. Advanced knowledge of Postgres and/or other relational databases. Experience with modern testing frameworks and practices including API testing. Strong organizational and prioritization skills. Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively within a remote team via tools like Slack, Notion, and Linear.

Nice To Have’s

Experience with authentication and authorization technologies (OAuth, JWT, etc) or techniques such SAML, SSO, etc. Knowledge of algorithms and protocols for securing data, including TLS/SSL, digital signatures, hashing, and encryption. Experience in monitoring and observability and running a production application at scale. Have experience building applications from scratch. Domain knowledge in payment processing, identify/auth, or finance. Experience working in Fintech, the financial services industry, or at early/pre-seed start up.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary

The salary range for this role is $150,000 - $180,000

Equity

Competitive Equity Package

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision health care plans Health care FSA/HSA plans 401K Commuter benefits PTO & 10+ Public Holidays Backpack Recharges - dedicated team time off to recharge

Location

Ideally New York City, NY or Austin, TX. In-office 3-5 days (hybrid).

Open to remote for the right person.

Interview Process

We value and prioritize transparency here at Backpack. Here is what you can expect:

Initial interview with hiring manager or one of our co-founders - 30-45 mins Second interview with one of our co-founders (CEO/COO) or hiring manager - 30-45 mins Coding Assessment - ~60 mins ‘Virtual’ (or in-person) onsite, including: Technical interviews Meeting the rest of the Backpack team Reference calls (we’ll ask for 2 references with at least one being a direct manager)

Accommodations

We are committed to providing an accessible interview process. If you need any accommodations during any point in the interview process, please let us know and we’ll work with you to better accommodate your needs.

We look forward to hearing from you!

We cannot wait to hear from passionate, driven and talented people that are excited about our mission. We are building a first of its kind fintech company to completely revolutionize an entire asset class and, eventually, how all Americans pay for their education. We acknowledge that this is a big ask list so even if there are a couple of missing pieces, we strongly urge you to still apply. #J-18808-Ljbffr