Senior Backend Engineer

About Tala

At Tala, we’re applying advanced technology and human creativity to solve what legacy institutions can’t or wont. We are a global financial infrastructure company on a mission to unleash the economic power of the global majority, recognizing that today’s financial infrastructure doesn’t work for most of the world’s population.

We’re the first and only platform to combine the intelligence of a credit bureau, the payments execution of a fintech, and the relationship expertise of a bank into one vertically integrated solution. Our platform is powered by an expansive moat of proprietary data and AI/ML decisioning technology, enabling us to deliver instant, reliable liquidity personalized to every customers needs. Through our flagship credit app, we’ve disbursed over $7 billion in credit to more than 12 million customers across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. These customers have leveraged Tala products to start and expand small businesses, manage day-to-day needs, and pursue their financial goals.

Our pioneering work and proven impact have earned us consistent recognition, including being named to:

CNBC’s Disruptor 50 for five years.

CNBC’s Worlds 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 Talas 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 Youll 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 Youll 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.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

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