Senior Backend Engineer

Join an early-stage startup.
Unlock access to credit.
Accelerate economic opportunity.

Join us as a senior backend engineer! If you have experience building performant and stable systems at scale, we'd love to chat. We're looking for someone who can continue meaningfully contributing to our codebase as our business scales. Our backend stack is Node (Typescript) on AWS.

• Kovo is transforming financial access for underserved Americans. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity for economic independence. Our innovative financial empowerment platform creates pathways to credit and financial inclusion, empowering individuals traditionally excluded from financial opportunities.

• We've scaled revenue 20x over the past three years, and our revenue efficiency (revenue per employee) is benchmarked at the 99th percentile. This is a venture-scale company that has started generating positive free cash flow early in its lifecycle, resulting in less dilution for our employees as we accelerate momentum without being dependent on venture funding to stay alive. We're seeking exceptional individuals eager to help us scale another 20x and beyond.

• Kovo is backed by Inspired Capital and Homebrew, along with founders and leaders from Plaid, Column, Ramp, Affirm, Cash App, NerdWallet, Alloy, MoonPay, Uber, Etsy, LendingClub, Grindr, and more.

• Direct impact on millions of people’s ability to access credit

• High ownership with minimal bureaucracy

• Speed, learning, and impact are core values

• Roles and priorities evolve quickly

• Some systems and processes are still being built

• The pace of execution and career growth is intense (not optimized for work-life balance)

• A little bit of everything! We're a small company, and you'll be expected to pick up many different things. You'll be an early backend hire, so you'll have input in long-term architectural and technical design decisions. You'll help establish the technical foundation for the entire company.

• Energized by building software for a business focused on financial empowerment for millions of underserved individuals

• Comfortable in a high-intensity role and seeking an ambitious workload. We are looking for engineers with a strong sense of ownership and willingness to deliver on tight deadlines. This takes many of our engineers more than 50 hours a week

• Thrive in a remote work environment

• Prior experience (5+ years) in a professional software engineering role

• Motivated to use AI, automation, and data tools in your day-to-day work to push the boundaries of what a single individual can do

• Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity, handles shifting priorities fluidly, and interfaces effectively between backend and frontend

• Worked with Node and AWS in a production setting

• Proficient with Typescript (bonus)