Senior Staff Backend Engineer

San Diego, CA

Full Time

Manager/Supervisor

Ascent is a leading provider of innovative financial products and student support services that enable more students to access education and achieve academic and economic success. Everything Ascent offers is designed with the best-in-class teams and technology to increase every student's ability to plan, pay, and succeed in their education and career. Ascent's planning tools and financing resources are co-created by students for those in college, graduate school, and career training programs. Ascent offers financial wellness education, student success services, and one-on-one and digital career coaching that put students' academic and professional goals within reach. Ascent has been widely recognized for its strong culture – named “Best Places to Work” by the San Diego Business Journal for the past 5 years – and as an industry leader – named “Best Student Loan” by NerdWallet for the past 3 years.

Description

As a Senior Staff Backend Software Engineer, you will take a leadership role in driving the technical direction and implementation of our backend services. Working alongside a talented team of Product Managers, Designers, and Engineers, you will shape the APIs that power our member-facing products, influence the architecture of our systems, and ensure the long-term health and scalability of our codebase. This position emphasizes both technical expertise and the ability to mentor and guide team members in building high-quality, scalable solutions. You will be empowered to propose innovative ideas, solve complex problems, and champion best practices across the organization.

Responsibilities

Lead the design and implementation of large-scale, low-latency services, elegant abstractions, shareable libraries, and robust APIs.

Drive technical decision-making and architectural discussions to ensure scalability, reliability, and security of our systems.

Oversee the execution of large-scale projects, collaborating closely with cross-functional teams and mentoring other engineers.

Write high-quality, maintainable code and ensure comprehensive test coverage.

Extend and enhance our services and APIs to improve configurability, reliability, and performance.

Proactively identify and mitigate risks, ensuring the resilience of our systems.

Establish and promote high technical standards, including compliance and security best practices, across the engineering team.

Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement within the team.

Qualifications

12+ years of experience crafting and implementing highly scalable and performant RESTful APIs

Expert level knowledge and experience programming in Golang

Proficiency in any other modern object-oriented programming language

Proven ability to lead technical teams, mentor engineers, and influence cross-functional collaboration.

Fluency in any database technologies (e.g. RDBMS like Mysql, MSSQL, or Postgres)

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a passion for mentorship and team development.

Broad knowledge and understanding of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS industry with hands-on experience of public cloud offerings (AWS, GAE, Azure)

Familiarity with cloud architecture patterns and an engineering discipline to produce software with quality

Familiarity designing, implementing, and maintaining cloud infrastructure on AWS using Terraform to manage Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, a related field or equivalent work experience.

Competitive pay with bonus, and comprehensive benefits package that includes, but not limited to:

Compensation includes a base salary of $155,000 - $185,000 commensurate with experience, plus bonus and options.

Company Stock Options

401(k) + Company Match

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Annual company HSA contribution of $1,650

Life insurance, disability, and critical illness

14 Paid Holidays! Eleven (11) + Two (2) Community Days + Your Birthday!

Snacks and drinks in the office

Tuition reimbursement program

Generous paid leave policies

$2,000 Vacation Incentive Plan after 3 years + $1,000 Sabbatical Day

Wellness, Work from Home funds, and more!

Apply for this position

Required*

Apply with Indeed

First Name*

Last Name*

Email Address*

Phone*

Address

Resume*

We've received your resume. Click here to update it.

Attach resume or Paste resume

Attach resume as .pdf, .doc, .docx, .odt, .txt, or .rtf (limit 5MB) or Paste resume

Paste your resume here or Attach resume file

Are you available to work on-site on Tuesdays at our San Diego office?*

What are your salary expectations for this position?*

Do you now, or will you in the future, require sponsorship to work in the United States (e.g., H-1B, work visa)*

How many years of programming experience do you have in Golang? (or similar - please state other language)*

How many years of experience do you have in crafting and implementing highly scalable and performant RESTful APIs?*

Were you referred to this position by someone? If so, please let us know who!*

The following questions are entirely optional.

To comply with government Equal Employment Opportunity and/or Affirmative Action reporting regulations, we are requesting (but NOT requiring) that you enter this personal data. This information will not be used in connection with any employment decisions, and will be used solely as permitted by state and federal law. Your voluntary cooperation would be appreciated. Learn more.

Gender

Race/Ethnicity

Human Check*

Submit Application