Senior/Staff Backend Engineer

About the role

You will design, build, and maintain the core backend APIs that power Blackbird's loyalty and payments platforms. You will collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and fellow engineers to define and execute the technical vision of the business. You will contribute to critical architectural decisions that shape the scalability and reliability of our ecosystem. You will mentor junior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of growth and high performance. You will provide backend perspectives in product and design discussions to assess implementation feasibility. You will uphold strict standards for code quality, testing, and performance across all services. You will help establish engineering best practices that drive long-term operational excellence.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Design, build, and maintain core backend APIs that serve as the foundation for restaurant loyalty and payments experiences.
• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering peers to deliver features aligned with business goals and customer needs.
• Contribute to system architecture and implement scalable, robust solutions that support growth across the Blackbird network.
• Uphold and promote backend best practices, with a strong focus on code quality, testing, performance, and operational reliability.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, sharing knowledge and elevating the entire team through feedback and collaboration.
• Participate in product and design discussions, offering backend perspectives on implementation tradeoffs and feasibility.
• Work autonomously in a fast-paced environment, making sound technical decisions with ownership and accountability.
• Engage with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure alignment between technical constraints and business objectives.
• Write clean, maintainable code that adheres to architectural patterns and supports long-term extensibility.
• Troubleshoot production issues, analyze system behavior, and drive improvements to reliability and performance.
• Partner with security and infrastructure teams to ensure backend services meet compliance and operational standards.
• Explore and prototype new technologies that could enhance the loyalty and payments platforms where appropriate.
• Document system designs, APIs, and workflows to ensure clarity for current and future contributors.
• Support the deployment and operation of backend services through observability and monitoring practices.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building and deploying backend APIs in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Kotlin or another statically typed JVM language for building robust services.
• Deep experience designing and maintaining RESTful APIs using domain-driven design principles and clear bounded contexts.
• Solid understanding of SQL databases, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning strategies.
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to delivering high-quality user experiences through reliable backend systems.
• Ability to work autonomously and make sound technical decisions in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment.
• Experience mentoring engineers and actively contributing to a positive, growth-oriented team culture.
• Comfortable working cross-functionally with product, design, and other stakeholders to align on priorities and execution.
• Familiarity with version control workflows, code review practices, and automated testing frameworks.
• Understanding of software development lifecycle practices including planning, estimation, and delivery coordination.
• Willingness to engage in technical discussions that balance business needs with engineering constraints.
• Commitment to continuous learning and adapting to new tools, languages, and patterns as the platform evolves.
• Readiness to uphold Blackbird's talent principles of passion, excellence, collaboration, and accountability in all work.

Nice to have

• Experience with the Spring framework and database abstraction layers such as Hibernate.
• Familiarity with the U.S. payments ecosystem, including debit, credit, and ACH processing.
• Exposure to DevOps practices, including AWS infrastructure and Terraform.
• Interest or experience in blockchain, especially with cryptography fundamentals.
• Experience productionizing generative AI features (e.g. retrieval-augmented generation, prompt engineering, or model integration).

Practical notes

This is a full-time position based in New York.