Backend Engineer — Fintech (Node.js)

The Role

We are looking for a Backend Engineer with strong fintech experience to join our core engineering team. You will be responsible for building, maintaining, and scaling the backend systems that power our financial platform. You will work closely with the product and frontend teams and take ownership of critical infrastructure including payment processing, wallet management, and third-party integrations.

Core Responsibilities

1. Design, build, and maintain scalable RESTful APIs using Node.js
2. Develop and manage financial transaction logic including payment processing, fee calculation, and ledger management
3. Integrate with third-party financial services including banking APIs, payment providers, and SMS gateways
4. Implement and maintain secure authentication and authorisation systems
5. Build background job processing, scheduling, and retry logic for financial workflows
6. Ensure data integrity across all financial operations through proper use of database transactions and error handling
7. Write clean, well-documented, and testable code
8. Participate in code reviews and contribute to engineering best practices
9. Collaborate with the product team to translate requirements into reliable technical solutions

Requirements

1. Minimum 4 years of backend engineering experience
2. At least 2 years working in a fintech, payments, or banking environment — this is non-negotiable
3. Strong, production-level proficiency in Node.js
4. Solid experience with PostgreSQL or a comparable relational database
5. Proven experience building and integrating payment systems or financial APIs
6. Strong understanding of security best practices — JWT, OAuth 2.0, encryption, and data protection
7. Experience with webhook handling, third-party API integrations, and building resilient systems that handle external failures gracefully
8. Familiarity with background job scheduling and queue management
9. Understanding of financial data integrity — idempotency, atomicity, and audit logging
10. Proficiency with Git and collaborative development workflows

Nice to Have

- Experience with KYC and AML workflows

- Familiarity with South African payment infrastructure or BaaS platforms

- Experience building group savings or cooperative finance products