The Senior Backend Engineer develops software solutions, designs backend systems, optimizes performance, and ensures code quality to support Tala's mission.
About Tala
Tala is AI-native credit infrastructure for the global majority, combining proprietary risk intelligence with an expanding network of capital and distribution partners to power credit access at scale. Backed by more than $500 million in funding, Tala has distributed more than $7 billion in capital to more than 13 million customers across Africa, Latin America, and Asia—building one of the most robust datasets on thin-file borrowers anywhere in the world. Our mission is simple yet bold: to unleash the economic power of the global majority. We are looking for daring, data-driven leaders passionate about building the trust and credit infrastructure for the global majority.
Our pioneering work and proven impact have earned us consistent recognition, including being named to:
CNBC’s Disruptor 50 for five years.
CNBC’s World's Top Fintech Companies for two consecutive years.
Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for nine consecutive years.
Visionary investors, persuaded by the economic power of the global majority, have committed half a billion dollars in equity and debt to Tala's success.
Given the global nature of our team, we operate on a remote-first approach with office hubs in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India.
Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!
The Role
The Senior Backend Engineer builds and extends Tala’s backend architecture to support new country launches, new products and features, and a fast-growing user base. As a technologist and a leader, the Senior Backend Engineer pushes the team towards building a highly available, scalable, reliable, fault-tolerant, and performant microservices platform. The Senior Backend Engineer follows and improves upon Tala’s engineering processes and standards while advancing Tala’s mission and business objectives
What You'll Do
- Develop, test, and deploy software solutions using Java, Scala, or Kotlin
- Design and contribute to backend systems, making key architectural decisions
- Work with deployment infrastructure and tooling, including CI/CD pipelines
- Handle schema evolution and data migrations in production systems
- Optimize backend systems for performance, including profiling, caching, and JVM tuning
- Ensure code quality and consistency through best practices and code reviews
- Create and maintain clear and concise technical documentation
What You'll Need
- 5+ years of professional software development experience
- Expertise in at least one of the following languages: Java, Scala, or Kotlin
- Solid understanding of software development principles, design patterns, and best practices
- Experience with databases (SQL and/or NoSQL) and data migrations
- Familiarity with message brokers or event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ)
- Experience with containerization and orchestration tools like Docker or Kubernetes
- Experience with Cloud infrastructure (AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure) and deploying services at the infra level
Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Top Skills
AWS
Azure
Docker
GCP
Java
Kafka
Kotlin
Kubernetes
NoSQL
RabbitMQ
Scala
SQL
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