Staff Backend Engineer, Payments

Kestrel moves roughly $4B a month on behalf of our customers. The payments platform is the part of our system where correctness is not negotiable and where the failure modes are expensive. We're looking for a staff engineer to own its technical direction: ledger design, reconciliation, idempotency guarantees, and the integration surface with banking partners.

• Own the architecture of our double-entry ledger and reconciliation engine
• Design for exactly-once semantics across unreliable banking partner APIs
• Set the technical bar for the payments team through design review
• Work with Risk & Compliance on controls that satisfy auditors without paralysing delivery
• Lead incident response for payment-path outages

• 8+ years backend engineering, with 3+ on payments, ledgers, or financial systems
• Deep understanding of distributed systems failure modes and idempotency
• Strong Postgres — including isolation levels and why they matter here
• Experience in a regulated environment with formal change control

• Competitive base plus annual performance bonus
• 401(k) with 8% match and profit sharing
• Medical, dental, vision, and supplemental life insurance
• $5,000 annual professional certification budget (CFA, CPA, cloud certs)
• Commuter benefits and in-office lunch daily

Kestrel Financial provides automated treasury, reconciliation, and cash-forecasting tools to mid-market finance organisations. Regulated as a money services business in 14 states.