Senior Backend Engineer

Location: USA, remote  

About Us  

Invaluable is one of the world’s largest online live auction marketplaces. We’re modernizing the auction experience by connecting millions of passionate bidders and buyers with auction houses across the globe. Our industry-leading live online bidding platform lets customers participate in premier auctions in real time—from their home, office, or mobile device.  

Role Summary  

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you’ll deliver new features, improve performance and reliability, reduce technical debt, and help shape backend standards and long-term strategy. You’ll collaborate closely with product, design, and engineering partners while mentoring teammates and raising the bar through thoughtful engineering practices.  

This role is fully remote from anywhere in the United States, with east coast business hours. 

Key Responsibilities  

• Build and ship features end-to-end across any tier of the Invaluable platform, from implementation through testing and deployment.  

• Improve quality and maintainability by refactoring legacy areas and reducing technical debt with pragmatic, incremental changes.  

• Own reliability and performance: diagnose production issues, squash bugs, and improve UX with measurable outcomes.  

• Drive backend architecture and standards: propose patterns, tooling, and conventions that improve developer experience and long-term maintainability.  

• Collaborate effectively through pairing, code reviews, and shared problem-solving, including communicating clearly across time zones.  

• Mentor and support engineers by sharing best practices, offering feedback, and helping others grow through guidance and technical leadership.  

• Partner with Product and Design to clarify requirements, scope work, identify tradeoffs, and deliver high-quality user experiences.  

Required Skills & Qualifications  

• 5–7+ years of professional backend engineering experience.  

• Strong proficiency with Java, and experience with one other language, either backend or frontend. 

• Experience working in and improving legacy codebases, with an ability to modernize safely over time.  

• Strong automated testing experience. 

• Dedication to writing clean code that performs well and is easy to understand and maintain. We encourage pragmatic AI-assisted development, with the understanding that all code must pass the same code review and quality standards. 

• Strong technical judgment.  Ability to propose solutions, explain tradeoffs, and make pragmatic decisions for long-term codebase health. 

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to choose the correct level of detail for your audience. 

• Collaborative and kind.  You should enjoy pairing, code reviews, and knowledge sharing, and be open to both learning and teaching.  

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience with ecommerce or payment products. 

• Experience with high-traffic consumer products. 

• Experience improving performance and observability in production. 

• Experience mentoring more junior developers. 

• Experience with CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS. 

• Experience with microservices architectures. 

What We Offer 

• Competitive Compensation: $160,000-175,000 annually with up to 20% profit share bonus.

• 100% remote work for the entire company. 

• Approachable leadership.  We are a small company, and leadership is involved and visible. 

• A great team of smart, supportive people. 

• Health care, dental, vision, and life insurance. 

• 401(k) matching. 

• Employee assistance plan. 

• Paid parental leave. 

How to Apply 

For priority consideration, please use the cover letter field to briefly explain which of the required or preferred qualifications above you consider to be particular strengths of yours. 

Commitment to Diversity  

We believe diverse perspectives drive innovation and excellence. If you meet the minimum qualifications, we encourage you to apply—even if you don’t meet every preferred qualification. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, including those traditionally underrepresented in technology, and are committed to building an inclusive, equitable workplace where everyone can thrive.