Founding Backend + API Engineer

About AxelAxel builds developer infrastructure for the future of finance. We’re unlocking financial freedom for everyone, starting with the developer. As the leading universal and composable decentralized finance infrastructure platform, we’ve built the world class developer tooling needed to make building on the blockchain frictionless.Our culture is at the core of everything we do. We're obsessed with building teams that are intentional about what they create and empathetic through their process. We know that Axel is not possible without trailblazing, caring, and collaborative visionaries, so we've curated an environment that makes you excited to come to work each day and build a product we're all proud of — together.Axel is extremely well funded from phenomenal investors and some of the brightest minds in technology, giving us many years of runway and the ability to pay competitive salaries, offer great benefits, and provide meaningful equity.The RoleAs a backend engineer at Axel, you will design and build platforms, APIs, and services that are configurable and scalable around the globe. You’ll dictate Axel’s roadmap and set the standard for clean, readable, and secure APIs backed by a comprehensive test suite. You will spearhead many functions at Axel, with the opportunity to both work on infrastructure/platform systems, as well as produce direct user-facing business impact. You'll be working with a sophisticated and high-throughput distributed system, where you'll focus on architecting clean, intuitive, scalable, and seamless APIs + abstractions for developers across the globe.At Axel, we believe the magic happens when we’re in person. Our headquarters are based in Silicon Valley. If you are not based in the Bay Area and want to be IRL with the team, we can help you relocate or fly you to the HQ on a regular basis.You do not need to have any blockchain, web3/crypto, or DeFi experience to work in this role at Axel — we uphold a culture of collaborative coaching and learning. If you come to Axel, you’ll become a 10x better builder. We ensure you’re fully equipped with the skill set you need to excel in this space.What You’ll Be DoingBuild the future of financial infrastructure. You’ll be building out Axel’s core non-custodial read/write API, which houses four API suites: lending, staking, exchanging, yield.Architect simple solutions across complex systems. You’ll design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable and performant APIs, microservices, and systems.Play as a team. At Axel, engineering is a team sport. In a week, you might scope out a feature with the team, or you might be pair programming with other engineers. We're looking for builders who are committed to working together to build an incredible product.Own products from beginning to end. You’ll create and own our best practices for backend application development, with a focus on reliability, low latency, scalability, and data correctnessRaise the bar. You’ll raise Axel’s high technical bar and identify opportunities to improve existing practices.Obsess over your craft. You’ll be writing reliable, high coverage test cases for features you ship, debugging production issues across multiple levels of the stack.Strive for the best. You’ll continuously improve our engineering processes, tools, and systems that allow us to scale the code base, productivity, and the team.Grow with the company. Proactively engage with the team to solicit feedback, recruit, and interview engineering candidates, fostering a culture of respect, velocity, and excellenceWhat Excites Us2-4 years of relevant industry experience, particularly in backend developmentBackground in Computer Science or a technically related fieldExperience designing, building, scaling, and maintaining high-quality, developer-centric API productsExperience developing with Typescript (Node) and/or RustExperience with production distributed systems, web applications, and microservice architectureAbility to build future-proof interfaces that are easy to build against and support our developersAbility to debug and solve complex design, scaling, latency, or performance problems in high-throughput, low-latency systemsExperience in Docker, Kubernetes, AWS technologies, and/or the CI/CD pipeline is a plus!Knowing how to find a genuine balance between perfection and shipping quicklyExperience working with startups and/or fast-paced, ambitious environmentsPassion for decentralized finance and blockchains is a plus!A “can-do” hustler mentality, being a former founder, or building side projects is a huge plus!