Senior Backend Engineer - Fintech Scale at Alma in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
This is a senior-level backend engineering role (8+ years required) at a fast-scaling French fintech in the BNPL space. Alma is a Next40 member with €100M+ ARR — meaning it's past early-stage risk but still in a high-growth phase where individual impact is real and visible.
Compensation context: No salary is disclosed, but senior backend engineers in Paris fintech typically earn €70K–€95K annually. Alma's 100% health insurance coverage (including family), profit-sharing, and employee savings plan add meaningful total compensation beyond base salary — a green flag for financial wellbeing.
Skills you'll develop:
- High-scale fintech infrastructure: GCP, Kubernetes, Pub/Sub — all highly marketable cloud-native skills
- Payment systems and financial regulation compliance — a specialized, high-value niche
- Technical leadership: architecture influence, incident ownership, cross-functional collaboration
- Python at production scale with PostgreSQL — a strong and broadly applicable backend foundation
Culture signals: Squad-based structure with genuine ownership language ("own reliability end-to-end") suggests a mature engineering culture, not just feature-factory execution. The transparent interview guide and coffee chat with the squad indicate a collaborative hiring approach.
Green flags: Real architectural influence at scale, generous parental leave with no seniority requirement, mental health support, L&D platform. Watch for: French fluency is required — non-French speakers are excluded. The "regulated, fast-moving" framing may mean compliance overhead alongside velocity.
About Alma
At Alma, we believe sustainable commerce depends on fair, well-balanced trade. Because finance plays a pivotal role in business, our mission is to put it back in its rightful place — serving merchants and consumers.
Our installment and deferred payment solutions help merchants boost sales by 20% or more, increase customer loyalty, and deliver a seamless shopping experience — without encouraging bad debt.
As the buy now pay later leader in France and active in 10 European countries, we've empowered over 25,000+ merchants and 10 million consumers.
With 380+ Almakers and €100M+ ARR, Alma is scaling rapidly across Europe as a member of the Next40, and we're just getting started!
About the Team
We are hiring for different squads. We will direct you to a specific team depending on your interests and skills.
This position is a permanent contract (CDI) based in Paris or remote from France.
About the Job
Build the payment infrastructure of tomorrow
- Design and develop the APIs and backend components that power payments for thousands of merchants and millions of consumers across Europe.
Raise the bar on quality, security & performance
- Write maintainable, production-grade code that meets the highest standards of a regulated company processing billions of euros.
Shape our technical architecture
- Collaborate closely with Product and other tech leaders to evolve our architecture in line with growing business needs.
Own reliability end-to-end
- Lead incident response and performance troubleshooting, driving long-term improvements to ensure our platform stays resilient at scale.
You Will Work With
Python, Docker, React, GCP, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Redis, Pub/Sub, Datadog
About You
To succeed in this job:
- 8+ years of experience in backend engineering on large-scale systems (excluding internships and apprenticeships)
- Strong proficiency in Python and relational databases — we're open to other backend languages, but Python is our core stack
- Fluency in French with a solid level of English
- Methodical, with strong communication and problem-solving skills; at ease working in a cross-functional environment
Nice to have:
- Experience building payment or financial solutions
- A track record of influencing product and technical decisions at scale
- A Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field
Don't meet every single requirement? At Alma, we believe great hires come from diverse paths. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply. We value potential, curiosity and the ability to grow as much as experience.
What's in It for You
If you join, you will be able to grow and have impact on:
- Real-world scale — your code will directly power payments for millions of consumers and tens of thousands of merchants across Europe.
- Technical ownership — you'll have genuine influence over architecture decisions, not just implementation.
- A regulated, fast-moving environment — you'll tackle the unique challenges of building robust, secure fintech infrastructure in a company that's still moving fast.
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive salary based on 12 months
- Profit-sharing and employee savings plan
- Health insurance: 100% covered by Alma, including family package
- Disability insurance: 100% covered by Alma
- Sport: partnerships with Gymlib and Classpass, or €30/month reimbursement for sports activities
- Maternity/paternity leave: salary maintained at 100% during leave with no seniority requirement. Return to work at 4/5 schedule paid at 100% for 8 weeks.
- Sustainable Mobility Package (FMD): €544.80/year (excluding full-remote contracts)
- Meal vouchers: €10/day, 50% covered by Alma
- Mental health: free access to MindDay platform
- Paid time off: 25 days/year (+ additional paid leave granted for employees on executive contracts)
- Access to our Learning & Development Platform
- 2 weeks of full remote possible per year in summer
Interview Process
- Video call with a Talent Acquisition team member to understand your path, motivation & present the role.
- Video call with your future manager to deep dive into the role, the team, your profile, and answer all your questions.
- Take-home coding test, followed by a remote feedback session.
- Live system design interview to assess your practical and architectural knowledge.
- A coffee chat with the squad you'll join to further assess your skills and team fit.
More information on the hiring process can be found in our Interview Guide.
Diversity & Inclusion
At Alma, we believe that diversity fuels innovation and makes our community stronger. We are committed to building a workplace where every person feels seen, respected, and empowered to do their best work — whatever their gender, background, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability or lived experience. As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applicants from all walks of life, and all employment decisions are made based on qualifications, merit, and business needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
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