Sr. Backend Engineer, AI Projects

Pinwheel - Building the future of financial services in partnership with the biggest brands

“I love my banking app!” said no one, ever.

Pinwheel is on a mission to change that. We believe banks and financial service providers represent the greatest opportunity to build 10x better experiences, especially in the AI age. We’re building the next generation of financial products alongside some of the biggest names in the market including Robinhood, DoorDash, Chime, Cash App, Credit Karma, American Express, Discover, Intuit, Acorns, Visa and more.

If you’re excited by the idea of having your work touch and impact the lives of hundreds of millions of consumers, Pinwheel is the place for you.

If you get stoked about building products alongside the biggest brands in the world, Pinwheel is the place for you.

If you want to join a scrappy, hustling team that is obsessed with defining the future of financial services, Pinwheel is the place for you!

Pinwheel has raised $77M from top-tier investors such as Coatue, Notable, First Round, Upfront, Primary, American Express, Franklin Templeton, Indeed, Semper Virens and more.

**This role is hybrid with 3 days a week in our NYC office.**

Who are we looking for?

Pinwheel's Integrations Platform (IP) team builds the services, primitives, and tooling that make 1800+ integrations work at scale — proxy management, browser automation, identity flows, session handling, and the runtime that every Integrations Engineer (IE) builds on top of.

We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to own AI-driven, platform-level problem spaces end-to-end, raise the technical bar, and make the Integrations Engineering team measurably more productive. You'll identify categories of recurring problems, design systems that eliminate them, and lead the execution alongside junior and mid-level engineers.

Pinwheel is a hybrid environment, with a 3-day in-office requirement here in our NYC headquarters, near Union Square.

What will you do?

Own platform initiatives end-to-end: scope, design, build, ship, and maintain

Drive systems design for new integration infrastructure, including services, queues, data pipelines, async workflows

Lead projects staffed with junior and mid-level engineers; make them measurably more productive through code review, design feedback, and the systems you build

Identify and eliminate classes of problems rather than patching individual one off bugs

Set technical direction in ambiguous problem spaces

Collaborate closely with IE and adjacent teams to ensure platform primitives meet real consumer needs

What qualifications are necessary?

5+ years of backend engineering experience

Computer Science degree or comparable experience

AI-forward thinking: you have set yourself apart from others in willingness to drive AI projects forward

Strong systems design: your designs get adopted by peers; you can defend tradeoffs and anticipate failure modes

Demonstrated autonomous project leadership: examples of owning ambiguous, multi-quarter projects from idea to business outcomes

Nice to haves:

Integrations experience: you've built against third-party APIs, dealt with auth flows, rate limits, and the operational reality of depending on external systems

Browser automation experience (Selenium, CDP, Playwright): useful context for our integration surface

Browser fingerprinting / detection work

Experience designing and operating services that handle concurrency, failure modes, and meaningful scale

Experience with backend platform / infrastructure: services, queues, data pipelines, async processing

Expertise in Python

Experience working in Fintech or comparable regulatory environment

Track record of reducing oncall noise

At Pinwheel, total compensation is made up of salary + equity + benefits. We recruit motivated and high performing talent, and work to compensate people in line with the value they can bring to the organization in delivering outsized results. The talent market is competitive, and maintaining our ability to recruit and retain the best team possible is a top priority for Pinwheel. When creating an offer, we consider interview performance, candidate experience, external market competitiveness, and internal equity in thoughtfully assessing compensation. The expected cash salary range for this role is $160,000 - $200,000 base.

Why join Pinwheel?

Best time to join - Our company is small but well-funded, meaning you are joining at a time where you can impact and shape the company.

Be a cultural builder - You will have an active hand in molding the company culture and being a part of the entrepreneurial journey.

Build something revolutionary - Help build the products on the bleeding edge of financial services!

Benefits included:

Great compensation & equity packages

Full medical, dental, and vision benefits

Life & short-term disability insurance

Flexible PTO policy that prioritizes recharge and balance

Paid parental leave

401K for retirement planning

Mentorship opportunities

Free Citibike membership

Pet friendly offices and Zoom spaces

Diversity & Inclusion at Pinwheel

At Pinwheel, we are committed to building an environment that is diverse and inclusive. We believe that having people across different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives enables us not only to build the best financial products, but to help us realize the best versions of ourselves. Pinwheel is an equal opportunity employer, and we aim to be an open and supportive place to work.