Director of Backend Engineering at Farther

The Role 

As Director of Backend Engineering at Farther, you will lead and scale our backend engineering organization responsible for building the foundational services and infrastructure that power our entire wealth management platform. Your team builds and maintains our core platform, investment, and trading infrastructure. Using modern technologies like TypeScript, Bun, and CockroachDB, you will drive the team in  creating scalable, reliable services that support everything from client onboarding to portfolio management. You'll shape technical strategy, mentor engineering leaders, and play a key role in scaling both our technology and our team.

Your Impact 

• Drive technical vision and architecture decisions across our backend platform
• Architect and scale robust trading and investment systems that handle complex financial operations
• Drive technical decisions around order management, portfolio rebalancing, and trading automation
• Guide architecture decisions for real-time market data processing and financial calculations
• Partner with investment leadership to translate trading strategies into scalable systems
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence that balances quick delivery with sustainable architecture
• Build and lead high-performing backend engineering teams through effective recruiting, coaching, and talent development
• Establish backend development standards and best practices that scale across the organization
• Guide technical decisions around distributed systems, architecture, technology adoption, and technical debt management
• Partner with Frontend and Mobile leadership to ensure cohesive platform development
• Develop and mentor technical leaders within the backend organization
• Drive innovation in our core platform capabilities while maintaining high reliability and security standards
• Establish and refine engineering processes that enable rapid, reliable delivery while maintaining our startup speed
• Collaborate with Product leadership to shape and execute our technical roadmap

The Ideal Match 

• 12+ years of engineering experience with strong expertise in distributed systems and backend architecture
• 5-10 years of experience managing and leading backend technical teams in fast-paced environments
• 5-10 years leading teams building trading platforms, portfolio management systems, or similar
• Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, database design, and system architecture
• Experience working in financial markets, trading operations, and investment workflows
• Proven track record of recruiting, assessing, and developing world-class engineering talent
• Grit. You inspire your team through example, staying engaged in critical projects until completion and diving deep when needed
• Bias for action. You drive decisive action in ambiguous situations, making informed decisions with incomplete information
• Embrace of change. As a startup leader, you thrive in evolving environments and guide your team through significant transitions
• Active communication. You set the standard for transparent, proactive communication and excel at bridging technical and business contexts

Bonus Points 

• Deep expertise building financial systems or trading platforms
• Track record of innovation in fintech or wealth management
• Startup leadership experience scaling engineering organizations from early to growth stage
• Deep expertise in high-availability system design
• Track record of innovation in fintech or wealth management
• Experience leading geographically distributed engineering teams
• Background in event-driven architectures and real-time processing systems

Why Join Us

• Everything you need to build the perfect dev station from hardware to software
• Learn & grow through book clubs, seminars, and peer learning sessions
• Full health benefits + 401(k) matching & Roth IRA options
• Unlimited PTO
• An amazing collaborative atmosphere between product, design, and engineering to solve hard problems together
• We don’t use Jira!

🚀 Want to learn more about building the future of wealth tech at Farther? Visit tech-life.farther.com to discover more about our engineering teams, tech stack, culture, interview process, and perks & benefits.