Senior Backend Engineer at Grailed - $183K Rails in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Strong Senior IC Role at a Well-Backed Marketplace
Grailed (part of GOAT Group) is a late-stage, VC-backed startup with notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Y Combinator, plus strategic backing from Foot Locker. This suggests a company past early chaos but still with startup agility — a solid middle ground for engineers who want impact without pure startup risk.
Compensation vs. Market: At $124,800–$183,400 annually (tiered by state), this is competitive but not top-of-market for senior backend engineers. FAANG-tier roles in California often pay $200K–$280K+ total comp. However, for a product-focused marketplace company with work-life balance, this range is fair and mid-to-upper market.
Skills You'll Develop:
- Ruby on Rails with Sorbet — a niche but growing stack; Sorbet type-checking is increasingly valued
- PostgreSQL at scale — high-demand for senior roles at data-heavy companies
- LLM integration — emerging skill explicitly called out; great for long-term career positioning
- Marketplace architecture — anti-fraud, payments, scalability; highly transferable to fintech and e-commerce
Green Flags: Cross-functional squads, mentorship expectations, and code review culture signal a collaborative, growth-oriented environment. On-call rotation is a yellow flag to clarify in interviews — understand the frequency and compensation.
This role is ideal for a senior engineer who wants broad ownership across a real-scale consumer product without the volatility of an early-stage startup.
Headquarters: Remote US
Role Overview
We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer - Backend, to solve complex problems gracefully, grow scalable systems, and help to shape our technical vision. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll take an active role in breaking down projects into tasks, as well as the implementation methods used. We are solving a wide range of technical challenges as we power a leading fashion marketplace.
This is an opportunity to join a team of smart, thoughtful engineers with a clean, robust tech stack. We are organized into cross-functional squads, where you'll get to use some skills you already know, learn new ones, and help take the team to the next level. We are community driven, and supporting our sellers is critical as our marketplace continues to grow and thrive.
In this role, you will:
- Work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to build features and improvements
- Extend our API and back-end systems
- Interface directly with our PostgreSQL cluster
- Add to and improve our testing environment
- Solve challenges in architecture, security, anti-fraud, performance, scalability, personalization, optimization, payments and more
- Be a helpful and supportive presence on the team, contributing to code reviews and other team processes
- Keep up with the latest development trends in server-side technologies
- Mentor and sponsor other engineers in your areas of expertise
- Coordinate and communicate seamlessly across other technical and product teams
- Be part of an on-call rotation
- Use LLMs, when appropriate, to improve the product and development workflows
We are looking for:
- 4+ years of engineering experience
- Experience building, maintaining, or architecting one or more production web applications
- Knowledge of and opinions on API design, database design, naming, and simplifying complex services
- Understanding of operational concerns such as deployment, migrations, configuration, and provisioning
- Professional experience with the technologies with which we work (Ruby on Rails with Sorbet, PostgreSQL, AWS)
GOAT Group uses geographic pay tiers based on the employee's home state to align compensation with market differences across the U.S.
Hiring Range:
- Tier 1 (California, New York, Washington, Illinois, and other higher-cost markets): $146,800 – $183,400 USD
- Tier 2 (Mid-cost markets across the U.S.): $132,200 – $165,200 USD
- Tier 3 (All other U.S. locations): $124,800 – $156,000 USD
The hiring range for this position is $124,800 – $183,400 USD, plus benefits (401K, paid time off, dental, medical, vision, disability, life insurance options). To determine starting pay within the hiring range, we carefully consider a variety of factors, including primary work location, role/level, a candidate's skills, experience, market demands, and internal parity. You may reach out to a recruiter for additional information.
GOAT Group represents the leading platforms for authentic sneakers, apparel and accessories. Operating four distinct brands – GOAT, Flight Club, Grailed and alias – GOAT Group has a global community of more than 60 million members across 170 countries.
Founded in 2013, Grailed is the leading community-driven marketplace for rare luxury, streetwear and vintage fashion. The marketplace was built for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts, and features products from brands including Supreme, Raf Simons, Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Prada and more. With a highly curated selection of resale pieces including inventory exclusive to the platform, Grailed makes fashion accessible.
The company is backed by strategic investor Foot Locker, Inc. as well as some of the leading names in venture capital including Park West Asset Management, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Franklin Templeton, Adage Capital Management, Ulysses Management, D1 Capital Partners, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Matrix Partners, Upfront Ventures, Webb Investment Network and Y Combinator.
GOAT Group will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, if applicable. By applying, you authorize GOAT Group to send you text messages regarding your job application, interview and/or onboarding process, and other job opportunities at GOAT Group. If you are a California resident, please review our California Privacy Rights Notice for Job Applicants. If you are an EU or UK resident, please review our EU / UK Candidate & Employee Privacy Notice.
To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/grailed-senior-backend-software-engineer
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