Backend Developer

Branch Overview

Branch delivers world-class financial services to the mobile generation. With offices in the United States, Nigeria, Kenya, and India, Branch is a for-profit socially conscious company that uses the power of data science to reduce the cost of delivering financial services in emerging markets. We believe that everyone everywhere deserves fair financial access. The rapid spread of smartphones presents an opportunity for the world’s emerging middle class to access banking options and achieve financial flexibility. 

Branch’s mission-driven team is led by the founder and former CEO of Kiva.org. The company presents a rich opportunity for our team members to drive meaningful growth in rapidly evolving and changing markets. In 2019, Branch announced its Series C and has garnered more than $100M in funding with investments from leading Silicon Valley firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Trinity Capital, Foundation Capital, Visa, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

We value diversity and are committed to providing an inclusive working environment where human beings of all backgrounds can thrive. 

Job Overview

We are seeking a talented Backend Platform Engineer to build and enhance the core platform that powers our backend services. You will focus on designing scalable architectures, optimizing backend performance, and improving developer productivity. This role involves working closely with product engineers, DevOps, and data teams to build high-performance, fault-tolerant systems that scale seamlessly. You will work closely with our engineering team based in India, United States, Nigeria, and Kenya, collaborating across time zones to develop a world-class Fin-Tech platform.

As a company, we are passionate about our customers, fearless in the face of barriers, and driven by data. As an engineering team, we value bottom-up innovation and decentralized decision-making — we believe the best ideas can come from anyone in the company. We work hard to create an environment where everyone feels empowered to propose solutions, challenge assumptions, and drive meaningful impact. We are looking for individuals who thrive in a fast-moving, innovative, and customer-focused setting and want to contribute to building scalable, reliable, and efficient backend systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize scalable backend systems and APIs that support high-traffic workloads.
• Build and maintain developer platforms, frameworks, and tooling to enhance productivity and system efficiency.
• Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and observability in distributed systems by implementing best practices.
• Collaborate with engineers across teams to create efficient service architectures and improve system reliability.
• Work on database scalability and optimization, ensuring data consistency and performance for high-volume applications.
• Implement asynchronous processing, caching strategies, and event-driven architectures to improve system efficiency.
• Define and enforce coding standards, CI/CD pipelines, and automation to improve software quality and delivery speed.
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimizing query execution, load balancing, and resource utilization.
• Document technical architectures, best practices, and engineering processes to drive knowledge-sharing within the team.
• Stay up to date with emerging technologies in backend engineering, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure to enhance platform capabilities.

Qualifications

• You have strong experience (3+ years) of building backend software for web-based or mobile products.
• You have strong knowledge of software development fundamentals, including relevant background in computer science fundamentals, distributed systems, data storage, and agile development methodologies.
• You are pragmatic and combine a strong understanding of technology and product needs to arrive at the best solution for a given problem.
• You are highly entrepreneurial and thrive in taking ownership of your own impact. You take the initiative to solve problems before they arise.
• You are an excellent collaborator & communicator. You know that startups are a team sport. You listen to others, aren’t afraid to speak your mind and always try to ask the right questions. 
• You are excited by the prospect of working in a distributed team and company, working with teammates from all over the world.

Benefits of Joining

• Be part of a mission-driven, fast-paced, and entrepreneurial environment that fosters innovation and impact.
• Receive a competitive salary and equity package, reflecting your value and contributions.
• Thrive in a collaborative and flat company culture that encourages open communication and idea-sharing.
• Enjoy the flexibility of a remote-first work setup, with opportunities for occasional in-person collaboration.
• Benefit from fully-paid Health Insurance to support your well-being.
• Work-life balance is not a myth. Take advantage of paid time off, including personal leave, bereavement leave, and sick leave.
• Access fully paid parental leave, with 6 months of maternity leave and 3 months of paternity leave.
• Leverage annual professional development budget to upskill and advance your career.
• Participate in discretionary trips to our offices around the globe, supported by global travel medical insurance.
• Enjoy team meals and social events, both virtual and in-person, to connect and bond with colleagues.

· Write effective and scalable code in Ruby

· Build back-end components for web applications

· Test applications for performance, responsiveness, and security

· Review and debug junior developers’ code

· Integrate data storage and data processing solutions

· Build, install, and share gems and plugins

· Create automated test scripts

· Improve and maintain applications after deployment

· Coordinate with team members who work on different layers of infrastructure

• Contributing to the backend of the product development.
• Maintaining these applications for accuracy and high availability.
• Contributing to and enforcing great coding practices through code reviews.
• Sharing knowledge with your colleagues during regular knowledge Sharing sessions.
• Collaborate across functions and own the planning, estimation and execution for parts of the product.
• Continuously identify opportunities to improve system designs, architecture and implementation standards.

• Experience of architecting and building products/business critical backend applications using Ruby on Rails.
• Experience with relational databases like Postgres or MySQL.
• Experience of deploying and maintaining web applications.
• Exposure to cloud infrastructure like AWS, GCP etc.
• Familiarity with REST APIs and stress testing tools.
• Good communication skills.

2.       Proficiency with fundamental front-end languages such as HTML, CSS.

3.       Familiarity with JavaScript frameworks such as Angular JS, React, and Amber.

4.       Proficiency with server-side languages such as Python / Ruby / Java / PHP/ .Net.

5.       Good Understand with database technology such as MySQL, Oracle, and MongoDB.

• A Bachelors or master’s degree in engineering.
• 2-4 years of experience in software product development.
• Excellent in Data structure, Algorithms & Problem-solving skills.
• Should be willing to code in Node.js/Java/Python/ROR/Golang
• Write extensive, efficient code to address complex modules and that handles interaction between multiple components.
• Customer-focused, react well to changes, work with teams and able to multi-task.
• Must be a proven performer and team player that enjoy challenging assignments in a high-energy, fast growing and start-up workplace.
• Must be a self-starter who can work well with minimal guidance and in fluid environment

Icicle is looking for an experienced RoR developer who can effortlessly build with us the cleanest of all designs. We're looking for passionate Ruby on Rails developers to join our IT team in Mumbai.

Icicle builds Web & Mobile products for Startups, Brands, Digital Agencies and Enterprises, helping in bringing their ideas to life. More - www.icicletech.com

The team consists of bright young designers, hackers, senior developers, startup specialists. We are distributed with offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and New York. More - www.icicletech.com

What will you do?

As a Ruby on Rails developer, you will get to:

• Participates as an independent contributor on an agile development team working closely with team members to effectively deliver high quality code.
• Complete ownership of a product or feature from development to launch.
• Coordinate and participate in the code review process to ensure delivery of high-quality, testable code using best practices and current software patterns.
• Review and mentor other team members. Be a team player!
• Get complete control of the product with active involvement in deciding stack and architecture.

What we are looking for

• Minimum 3+ years in depth hard core experience in Ruby on Rails
• Deep understanding of object-orientated programming
• A knack for writing clean, readable maintainable Ruby code.
• Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to these problems.
• Skillset in Testing using Rspec
• Demonstrated skills and experience with writing testable code and using related best practices.
• Understanding of web services technologies such as REST is required.
• Good experience and understanding of continuous integration and deployment process.
• Knowledge in working with AWS or other cloud platform
• Experience in working with limited direction while exceeding delivery expectations.
• Great communication, particularly in explaining your coding processes, suggestions for best practices, and identifying ways to improve the teams coding quality.

Technical Expertise
Core

Ruby, Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS3, JavaScript, Rest API
Databases

PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Memcached
Testing

Rspec (or any other Unit testing framework)
Cloud/Deployments

Capistrano, Docker, Heroku, AWS, Kubernetes

Desirable Skills

• Participation in open-source projects.
• Actively involved in solving problems on Github, Stackoverflow.com and groups.
• Experience working in JS and front end frameworks (React)
• Interest in learning new technologies.

Why Icicle

• 100% work-life balance
• Competitive salary
• Perks of getting free Gym Membership vouchers.
• Medical checkup Vouchers with topnotch hospitals and coupons for medical bills.
• Exposure to futuristic technology, mentally stimulating work environment.
• Opportunity to work with a big team of experienced, committed, talented people with a great sense of humour.
• Stability of a legacy company and agility of a startup - best of both the world.
• A healthy work environment with no politics, no bureaucracy.
• Encouraged to learn new skills, grow together, not just maintain the status quo

So, if you have 3+ years of experience developing applications with Ruby on Rails, apply today!

Key responsibilities for this role include:

• Lead one of the product verticals in the development of technology strategy, planning, hiring and execution of the next iteration of the WeInvest platform.

• Institutionalize a strong software engineering culture and facilitate a rapid, iterative, layered development approach.

• Be hands on with the coding, evaluate design and architecture choices, do in-depth code reviews, and implement standards and practices for software development.

• Inspire the engineering team to build quality, scalable code by pairing with team members periodically.

• Participate in the definition and management of high-quality product roadmaps based on business, product & tech strategy.

• Proactively identify and resolve strategic issues that may impair the team’s ability to meet strategic, financial, and technical goals.

The ideal candidate will have:

• Masters /BE/ B.Tech from a reputed institute

• About 6-10 years professional experience in software development.

• Excellent logical and analytical reasoning capabilities combined with strong knowledge of core

computer science concepts like algorithms, data structures, software design patterns, OOP etc.

• Should have experience in all the phases of SDLC

• Must have experience in leading a team. (At least 2-3 people)

• Be an expert in ruby on rails with experience OR from Fintech, Wealth Management OR Investment

• Management Domain with experience in any of the programming languages (Java/Python/Ruby).

• Breadth of experience in multiple technologies, tools, frameworks and processes is a big plus.

• Excellent understanding of core computer science concepts like algorithms, data structure,

Software design patterns, OOP etc. Be able to lead the team in design & architecture discussions,

introduce new tools, concepts & process to the team and guide other members of the team.

• Experience working in an agile team with software engineering practices like automated testing,

test- driven-development, continuous integration etc is a big plus.

• Excellent oral and written communication.

• Understands detailed requirements and demonstrates excellent problem solving skills
• Deep understanding of software engineering practices, Design Patterns, Data Structures, Algorithms
• Excellent programming skills in ROR, Golang, NodeJS, Python or Java
• Strong communication skills
• Strong sense of ownership, drive and ability to deliver results
• 2+ years of experience in product driven organization