Staff Backend Engineer

**Axle** Staff Backend Engineer; $220K–$250K + equity; New York (On-site)

**About Company** Axle is a New York-based corporate access platform. Investment banks use Axle to run their corporate access business, including CRM, email, event management with client portals, reporting, and AI-powered features such as email targeting and meeting allocation between public-company executives and investors. Investment banks already run on Axle.

The founders come from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, and the company is backed by VCs and former senior leaders from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Citadel.

**About the Role** A hands-on, individual-contributor Staff Backend Engineer who owns architecture and coding for the high-throughput systems behind Axle's email delivery, reporting, calendar and customer data integrations, and who shapes the foundation for the company's AI capabilities. The role is the most technical seat on the team, with no people management: sharing work and helping teammates as needed. Reports to the co-founder and CIO.

**Responsibilities** - Scale high-throughput systems for email delivery, reporting, calendars and customer data integrations. - Modularize backend services for resilience and independent scaling. - Optimize PostgreSQL queries, API latency and data-heavy operations. - Keep customer data syncs (Salesforce, Snowflake, SMTP) reliable as client volume grows. - Shape the technical foundation for AI capabilities, including data pipelines. - Improve developer experience.

**Required Skills** A. 8+ years building production backend systems. B. Strong Java/Spring Boot experience, or a comparable backend framework. C. Deep relational database experience, ideally PostgreSQL, including multi-tenant schema design and partitioning. D. Production AWS experience. E. Track record of independently owning complex backend projects end to end.

**Bonus Skills** - High-volume data integrations. - Multi-tenant B2B SaaS. - Infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi, Terraform). - Production AI features.

**Logistical Info** - Location: New York, NY (Flatiron), in office 5 days a week. Core hours are 9:30am–6:30pm, with flexibility when communicated. - Compensation: $220K–$250K + equity. - **Other:** Unlimited PTO; fully covered medical, dental and vision; lunch and commute stipend; office snacks and drinks.

**Ideal Background** - Full-time employment background is preferred over consulting or contracting. - Staff is the top level of Axle's four-level engineering ladder (software engineer, senior, lead, staff). - At least three separate, meaningful experiences, with outsized ownership of what is on the resume and deep knowledge of it. - Employer pedigree is not a blocker: Axle has hired from Amazon and from a healthcare company. - Visa sponsorship leans no, but the client will evaluate it for the right fit. Candidates should ideally be based in New York; there may be flexibility for someone exceptional.

**Green Flags** - Uses AI heavily across their engineering workflow, well beyond writing tests. - Collaborative and focused on the collective mission; asks questions and is curious about context.

**Red Flags** - Resistant to using AI heavily; sees its value only for writing tests. - Changes roles every 6–12 months; stability matters to the client. - Ego: focused mainly on their own impact and what they will work on, rather than the team goal; doesn't ask questions in interviews.

**Interview Process** 1. Intro call with the co-founder and CIO (~30 min). 2. Call with the CEO (~15 min). 3. Technical interview (45–60 min), such as a system design exercise. 4. In-person at the Flatiron office (~2.5 hours): work through a problem with the team and meet different people.