Senior Backend Engineer

About Cake

Cake is building an innovative equity and incentives platform designed for high-performing startup teams. Trusted by over 10,000 startups, Cake manages cap tables, stock options, and ownership details. Our vision extends beyond equity management to developing intelligent systems that track important company changes and assist founders and teams in making informed decisions.

We embrace AI advancements in software development by empowering our skilled engineers with enhanced tools, context, and autonomy to create impactful solutions.

Your Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will have full ownership of significant backend systems and product challenges. Your responsibilities include:

• Developing essential backend components related to cap table engines, transactions, billing, valuations, integrations, and automation.
• Designing scalable and reliable APIs and data models that maintain integrity amidst growing volume and complexity.
• Handling dynamic financial and equity datasets involving vesting schedules, transactions, ownership changes, valuations, employee actions, and corporate events.
• Proactively resolving performance, scalability, and reliability issues before they impact users.
• Incorporating thorough testing, observability, and operational reliability into your systems.
• Collaborating closely with product, design, and frontend teams to shape technical solutions without depending on fully completed specifications.
• Leveraging cutting-edge AI tools such as Claude and Codex during analysis, architectural design, development, testing, and debugging phases.
• Identifying appropriate tasks for deterministic software, AI enhancements, and human judgment within system workflows.
• Enhancing our development process through improved context, tooling, automation, and workflows to maximize the impact of our small engineering team.

Required Qualifications

• Over five years of experience developing and maintaining production backend systems.
• Expertise in Python and Django frameworks.
• Strong command of SQL and data modeling techniques, including query optimization and diagnosis of performance issues.
• Experience creating APIs and architectures that scale reliably under increased complexity and demand.
• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS and/or GCP, containerization with Docker, and modern production environments.
• A commitment to high standards of correctness, rigorous testing, observability, and reliable system operation.
• Practical experience using Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI-driven development tools to boost productivity without compromising individual judgment.
• Ability to tackle ambiguous challenges independently from problem conceptualization through architecture, coding, deployment, and maintenance.
• Self-driven mindset suitable for distributed teams without heavy process requirements.
• Strong product intuition: prioritizing customer-centric, effective solutions.

Desirable: Previous experience in startups, financial software, handling high-integrity data, automation of systems, or working within hypothesis-driven product teams.

Technology Stack

Our core technologies include Python, Django, SQL, AWS, GCP, and Docker. We integrate leading AI-powered coding and reasoning tools extensively throughout the development cycle, with flexibility to adapt as the tools evolve.

Additional Information

Application Process: To apply, please submit a brief video introducing yourself, your skills, and background. This will help your application stand out beyond traditional written submissions.

Why Join Cake?

• Ownership: You’ll lead full system domains and contribute significantly to our technical vision.
• AI-empowered engineering: Access to cutting-edge models and the autonomy to decide how best to apply them.
• Meaningful challenges: Work with complex financial, legal, tax, and corporate data where accuracy is crucial.
• Impact: A small engineering team with a direct line to tens of thousands of customers including founders, employees, investors, and advisors.
• Company equity: Benefit from participation in Cake’s ESOP program.
• Work-life balance: Five weeks of annual leave plus birthday leave to support wellbeing.
• Flexible working: Based out of our product and engineering hubs in Palm Beach or Lisbon, balancing focused individual work and collaborative problem-solving.