# Software Engineer, Backend

**Company:** [Clay](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/clay)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $170k – $300k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** API Design, Schema Design, SQL, Postgres, Query Optimization, Redis, Elasticsearch, Opensearch, AWS, Python, Node.js, TypeScript, Terraform, AWS Lambda, React
**Posted:** 2026-08-14

> Build and own backend systems powering customer-facing enrichment, signals, workflows, and agent capabilities. The role combines product ownership with engineering, requiring strong API, schema, SQL, PostgreSQL, scalability, and customer-driven execution skills.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own a product surface end to end, from problem definition through shipped and measured outcomes.
- Scope work with design, data science, and go-to-market partners; write specifications, prioritize scope, and make product decisions.
- Talk directly with customers through calls, tickets, and observation of product usage.
- Ship quickly in small teams and short development cycles, then learn from production usage.
- Design data models, APIs, and jobs behind new product capabilities.
- Improve system performance and reliability as usage scales.
- Improve the codebase and raise engineering velocity.
- Mentor other engineers and learn from teammates.

## Requirements
- 4+ years of hands-on engineering experience building products used by customers.
- Interest in owning both product-management and engineering responsibilities.
- Strong backend fundamentals, including API design, schema design, SQL, PostgreSQL, and query optimization.
- Bias toward impact, iteration, and shipping.
- Clear, empathetic communication across different audiences.
- Strong software craftsmanship and attention to code quality.
- Appreciation for diverse perspectives and inclusive collaboration.

## Nice to Have
- Experience with large-scale, high-performance data pipelines, event-ingestion systems, or other large production systems.
- Expertise with Redis, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, or OpenSearch.
- Advanced optimization of serverless workloads on AWS.
- Experience building LLMs or agents as product surfaces.
- Experience with React, TypeScript, Python, Node.js, Aurora, ElastiCache, ECR, ECS/Fargate, Lambda, OpenSearch, Terraform, CircleCI, Netlify, Playwright, CloudWatch, Datadog, or Mezmo.

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/330441dd-b246-4f4d-bb27-e6ed652b6010
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/330441dd-b246-4f4d-bb27-e6ed652b6010