Backend Engineer (Mid/Sr)

What is Spade? Financial institutions process billions of transactions every day across cards, ACH, wires, and third party aggregators. But most of that data is difficult to use. Descriptions are inconsistent, merchant names don’t match, and categories vary by payment type. Spade is a data and AI platform that turns messy transaction strings into structured, verified records — and gives teams the tools to act on it across authorization, attribution, analytics, and AI initiatives. Spade leads the market in terms of merchant coverage, matching accuracy, geolocation data, and speed of transaction enrichment. Customers such as FIS, Bilt, Mercury, Stripe, alongside many other leaders in fintech and financial services, trust Spade's data to enable personalized rewards programs, accurate applied spending rules, precise analytics requests, and innovative AI-powered features. Spade is a fast growing, Series B company backed by industry experts and top tier investors (including Oak HC/FT, a16z, Flourish Ventures, Y-Combinator, and Gradient Ventures). We’re a lean and execution-oriented hybrid team, passionate about building exceptional products for our growing customer base. We care deeply about diversity of background, experience, and opinion. We value empathy, curiosity, and passion, and strive to create an environment where individuals have autonomy and the ability to take ownership over their work. What will you do? As a Backend Engineer at Spade, you'll own the APIs and data systems that sit at the heart of our enrichment platform. You'll work across the full backend stack — from the developer-facing APIs our customers depend on, to the data pipelines and platform services that power our data science team. This is a high-ownership role on a small team, where your decisions directly shape the performance and reliability of products processing billions of transactions. Collaborate on our technical vision to build a product customers love Develop and maintain low-latency, massively-scalable developer-facing APIs and a robust data platform supporting our data science team Design and implement systems that support the growth of the product and the company Debug production issues across all levels of the stack Bring a strong collaborative approach to deliver value to customers and internal stakeholders at Spade What experience, skills, and qualifications are necessary? Must-have: 4+ years of experience building and scaling backend Python-based systems in fast-paced environments Proven capability with developing REST APIs and writing performant SQL Experience building using AWS infrastructure Experience building systems from scratch, making trade-offs, and executing autonomously in early-stage environments A customer-focused mindset, strong problem solving skills, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while delivering value to customers A collaborative mindset, the ability to be mentored, and a focus on your own growth trajectory Based in NYC with ability to work out of our Flatiron office at least 2 days/week Nice-to-have: Proficiency in Django Familiarity with data science and analytics tools such as Pyspark, Databricks and Delta Lake, and Hex Experience with cloud infrastructure and tools like AWS CDK Experience with transaction, merchant, and/or location data Experience and/or interest in fintech and/or data products Why join Spade? Be a cultural founder . As an early employee, you’ll play a meaningful role in defining and building our culture. Get in on the ground floor. We’re a small but well-funded team – joining now comes with limited risk and unlimited upside. Build the next generation of financial infrastructure. Our products will power the next wave of innovation in fintech, helping our customers deliver better, more transparent products and services to the consumer. Benefits include: Competitive compensation and equity package Full medical, dental, and vision benefits for US-based employees Life & short-term disability insuran