Backend Software Engineer

Backend Engineer - Rendy

About Rendy

Rendy is a peer-to-peer marketplace that connects people who own high-quality equipment (cameras, gear, etc.) with people who need to rent it. We are building the engine that powers the sharing economy, allowing everyday individuals to monetize their unused gear safely and seamlessly.

We are scaling our core microservices platform that processes thousands of bookings, manages complex payment routing through Stripe Connect, handles security holds and escrow logic, and powers real-time inventory synchronization across a two-sided marketplace.

As an early backend engineering hire, you won't just be fixing bugs—you will be architecting scalable microservices, designing robust event-driven systems, and building the financial backbone that keeps our marketplace running securely and reliably.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Backend Engineer to build and scale Rendy's microservices architecture. You will own the design and implementation of critical backend systems that power our peer-to-peer marketplace, including user matching, booking state machines, payment orchestration, escrow logic, and transactional ledgers.

You will work autonomously in a lean engineering team, making architectural decisions that directly impact product velocity and user experience. As an early-stage hire, you'll shape how we build, deploy, and scale our backend infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Microservices Architecture & Design: Architect, build, and document scalable backend microservices in Node.js/TypeScript that handle independent domains (auth, bookings, payments, inventory, notifications, etc.). Design clear service boundaries, inter-service communication patterns, and deployment strategies.
• Event-Driven Systems: Design and implement event-driven workflows using Kafka to ensure reliable asynchronous processing, eventual consistency, and decoupled service communication. Maintain per-service databases with careful consideration for distributed system constraints.
• Payment & Financial Systems: Build complex payment orchestration logic using Stripe Connect, including direct charge processing, security holds, capture workflows, and secure escrow handling. Implement reliable transaction ledgers and reconciliation systems.
• Database Architecture: Design and optimize PostgreSQL databases for each microservice, handling complex marketplace logic including booking state machines, inventory availability, transaction tracking, user profiles, and marketplace constraints. Write efficient queries and maintain data integrity across service boundaries.
• API Design & Documentation: Design clean, predictable REST and tRPC APIs that frontend teams can consume with confidence. Establish clear API contracts, versioning strategies, and comprehensive documentation.
• Security & Compliance: Implement robust authentication (auth-service), authorization, data validation, PII protection, and secure payment workflows. Ensure transaction flows maintain ACID properties where required and handle edge cases gracefully.
• Testing & Reliability: Write comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. Design systems that fail gracefully, implement idempotency where critical, and maintain high observability for debugging complex distributed scenarios.
• Leverage AI-Assisted Development: Use AI agents and code generation tools effectively to accelerate development—writing boilerplate, generating test cases, analyzing complex logic, debugging, and refactoring code. Stay current with modern AI-assisted development practices to maximize your individual productivity.

What You Bring to the Table

• Experience: 3+ years of professional backend software development, with strong experience building microservices or distributed systems.
• Core Stack: Expert-level proficiency in Node.js/TypeScript. Strong PostgreSQL skills—you can write efficient queries, design normalized schemas, and understand transaction semantics.
• Microservices Mastery: Deep understanding of microservices architecture including service decomposition, event-driven communication, distributed data management, and independent deployment strategies.
• Marketplace/Payment Systems: Prior experience building two-sided marketplaces, payment systems, booking engines, or complex financial workflows is highly preferred. You understand the nuances of marketplace trust, fraud prevention, and escrow logic.
• API Design: You design APIs that other engineers love to consume. Experience with tRPC and end-to-end type safety is a strong plus.
• Event-Driven Systems: Experience designing and implementing event-driven architectures using Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar message brokers.
• AI Agent Fluency: Comfortable using AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) to accelerate development—code generation, test writing, debugging, architecture discussions, and refactoring. You understand when and how to delegate tasks to AI effectively while maintaining code quality and security standards.
• Mindset: You are a self-starter who thrives in an autonomous, lean environment. You're comfortable making architectural tradeoffs, can prioritize effectively in a resource-constrained setting, and are always eager to learn new technologies or patterns to solve complex problems.

Nice to Haves

• Familiarity with React/Next.js or other frontend frameworks to unblock the UI team and understand full-stack context.
• Experience with infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, etc.), and containerization (Docker).
• Knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) and database replication/sharding strategies.
• Experience with payment platforms (Stripe, PayPal) and PCI compliance considerations.
• Prior startup experience and comfort with rapid iteration.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary with equity
• Flexible working hours and remote-friendly culture
• Opportunity to architect and build a platform from the ground up
• Direct impact on product direction and business growth
• Learning opportunity in a fast-paced startup environment
• Work alongside founders and a lean, skilled engineering team

How to Apply

Send us your resume, GitHub profile (if available), and a brief note about why you're interested in Rendy and a time you successfully used AI agents to solve a complex engineering problem.