Description review
Senior Software Engineer
Cyclops · United States · back to the listing
HR standards
61/100
needs work
Title ↔ description
81/100
solid
Reads as
Backend Engineer
99% confident
What this role officially is
software developer — ESCO, the EU occupation classification
Software developers implement or program all kinds of software systems based on specifications and designs by using programming languages, tools, and platforms.
Also known as: application developer, application programmer, solutions developer, programmer, software specialist, application software developer
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What the listing never says
- 30 bullet points. Long requirement lists deter qualified candidates, who read them as hard gates. Scope clarity
- No pay range published. Candidates cannot tell whether applying is worth their time. Pay transparency
The listing, marked up
Nothing in the wording of this listing tripped a check. The scores above still judge how complete and coherent it is.
Role Overview
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer with a strong backend background, comfortable in a product-driven environment with changing priorities and a high level of ownership. This is a backend-first role (~70%) with occasional frontend tasks (~30%) when features require touching UI or integrating SDKs. Success means owning the technical side end-to-end: shaping technical solutions under uncertainty, taking responsibility for system behavior in production, and contributing to long-term platform evolution alongside Product Managers, the Engineering Manager, and other senior engineers.
Key Responsibilities
• Design and implement backend-heavy features using TypeScript and Node.js; build and evolve REST APIs with focus on correctness, consistency, and clear boundaries between services
• Work with SQL (PostgreSQL): data modeling, migrations, and consistency guarantees
• Take full ownership of one or more services, from requirements and implementation to production support, and drive integration work with external partners (vendors, clients) when needed
• Own production behavior: investigate incidents, debug API failures, analyze data issues, and apply reliability patterns (timeouts, retries, idempotency, graceful degradation)
• Improve observability (logs, metrics, visibility into system behavior) and propose improvements where reliability, performance, or monitoring is weak
• Participate in tech spikes: explore unclear problems and turn them into concrete technical plans
• Collaborate with Product and EM to clarify requirements and reduce ambiguity early; contribute to technical discussions, raise risks, and explain trade-offs
• Review code, mentor mid-level engineers, and contribute to React code when features require UI updates or customer-facing flows
Required Qualifications
• 4+ years of professional software development experience
• Strong backend expertise with TypeScript and Node.js
• Real production experience: incidents, debugging, API failures, data issues
• Experience owning a service end-to-end, from requirements to production support
• Clear product-level architectural thinking: well-designed APIs, correct data boundaries, proper error handling, ability to reason about trade-offs
• Understanding of microservice architectures and platform-level interactions
• Strong knowledge of HTTP APIs, SQL data modeling, and common failure modes
• Proficient daily use of AI coding tools (e.g. Claude Code), with the ability to review AI-generated code quickly and critically
• Readiness to build deep working knowledge of crypto and stablecoin payments: prior crypto experience is optional, and deep on-the-job learning of the domain is a mandatory part of the role
• Ability to work with ambiguity: ask the right questions and structure unclear problems, working independently without overly detailed technical specs
• High agency: you notice problems before they are assigned to you, raise risks early, and bring a proposed solution together with the problem
• Strong written and verbal communication in English
Preferred Experience
• Experience in fintech, crypto, payments, high-load or high-reliability systems
• Practical understanding of reliability patterns: retries, timeouts, idempotency, fallback strategies
• Experience with queues or messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, BullMQ, etc.)
• Experience with Redis or other key-value stores
• Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes (user-level understanding is enough)
• Basic understanding of AWS capabilities
• Experience with React (UI tasks, integrations, SDKs)
Reporting Structure
Reports to the Engineering Manager. No direct people management responsibilities.
Location
Remote. USA, Argentina, or Brazil. The role works US business hours (Eastern Time).
Compensation and Benefits
As an independent contractor, you'll enjoy the flexibility to determine how and when you deliver your work, while partnering closely with our team to meet agreed milestones and business objectives. Compensation and engagement terms will be outlined in your contractor agreement.
Additional Benefits
• Company issued laptop
• Technology Accessories
• Annual In-Person Full-Team Meetup
---
About Cyclops
Cyclops is the first stablecoin and crypto infrastructure platform built exclusively for the payments industry. With low and no code solutions, Cyclops is the fastest way for payments companies to bring crypto and stablecoin offerings to market. Founded by crypto and payments industry veterans who built crypto solutions for Shift4, Cyclops enables crypto acceptance, stablecoin settlement and stablecoin payouts for payments companies.
Cyclops has raised a seed round and, more recently, a $20M Series A to accelerate the growth of the most complete stablecoin platform. We move fast, we think rigorously, and hold ourselves to the highest standard in the industry.
Cyclops Culture
Don’t join Cyclops if you’re looking for a typical 9-5. The culture we’ve built is one of first-principles thinking and relentless execution. We wake up every day excited to deliver great products worthy of the world’s best companies. Everyone who works at Cyclops must have a founder mindset, where no problem is too big to solve.
Originally posted on Himalayas
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer with a strong backend background, comfortable in a product-driven environment with changing priorities and a high level of ownership. This is a backend-first role (~70%) with occasional frontend tasks (~30%) when features require touching UI or integrating SDKs. Success means owning the technical side end-to-end: shaping technical solutions under uncertainty, taking responsibility for system behavior in production, and contributing to long-term platform evolution alongside Product Managers, the Engineering Manager, and other senior engineers.
Key Responsibilities
• Design and implement backend-heavy features using TypeScript and Node.js; build and evolve REST APIs with focus on correctness, consistency, and clear boundaries between services
• Work with SQL (PostgreSQL): data modeling, migrations, and consistency guarantees
• Take full ownership of one or more services, from requirements and implementation to production support, and drive integration work with external partners (vendors, clients) when needed
• Own production behavior: investigate incidents, debug API failures, analyze data issues, and apply reliability patterns (timeouts, retries, idempotency, graceful degradation)
• Improve observability (logs, metrics, visibility into system behavior) and propose improvements where reliability, performance, or monitoring is weak
• Participate in tech spikes: explore unclear problems and turn them into concrete technical plans
• Collaborate with Product and EM to clarify requirements and reduce ambiguity early; contribute to technical discussions, raise risks, and explain trade-offs
• Review code, mentor mid-level engineers, and contribute to React code when features require UI updates or customer-facing flows
Required Qualifications
• 4+ years of professional software development experience
• Strong backend expertise with TypeScript and Node.js
• Real production experience: incidents, debugging, API failures, data issues
• Experience owning a service end-to-end, from requirements to production support
• Clear product-level architectural thinking: well-designed APIs, correct data boundaries, proper error handling, ability to reason about trade-offs
• Understanding of microservice architectures and platform-level interactions
• Strong knowledge of HTTP APIs, SQL data modeling, and common failure modes
• Proficient daily use of AI coding tools (e.g. Claude Code), with the ability to review AI-generated code quickly and critically
• Readiness to build deep working knowledge of crypto and stablecoin payments: prior crypto experience is optional, and deep on-the-job learning of the domain is a mandatory part of the role
• Ability to work with ambiguity: ask the right questions and structure unclear problems, working independently without overly detailed technical specs
• High agency: you notice problems before they are assigned to you, raise risks early, and bring a proposed solution together with the problem
• Strong written and verbal communication in English
Preferred Experience
• Experience in fintech, crypto, payments, high-load or high-reliability systems
• Practical understanding of reliability patterns: retries, timeouts, idempotency, fallback strategies
• Experience with queues or messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, BullMQ, etc.)
• Experience with Redis or other key-value stores
• Familiarity with Docker and Kubernetes (user-level understanding is enough)
• Basic understanding of AWS capabilities
• Experience with React (UI tasks, integrations, SDKs)
Reporting Structure
Reports to the Engineering Manager. No direct people management responsibilities.
Location
Remote. USA, Argentina, or Brazil. The role works US business hours (Eastern Time).
Compensation and Benefits
As an independent contractor, you'll enjoy the flexibility to determine how and when you deliver your work, while partnering closely with our team to meet agreed milestones and business objectives. Compensation and engagement terms will be outlined in your contractor agreement.
Additional Benefits
• Company issued laptop
• Technology Accessories
• Annual In-Person Full-Team Meetup
---
About Cyclops
Cyclops is the first stablecoin and crypto infrastructure platform built exclusively for the payments industry. With low and no code solutions, Cyclops is the fastest way for payments companies to bring crypto and stablecoin offerings to market. Founded by crypto and payments industry veterans who built crypto solutions for Shift4, Cyclops enables crypto acceptance, stablecoin settlement and stablecoin payouts for payments companies.
Cyclops has raised a seed round and, more recently, a $20M Series A to accelerate the growth of the most complete stablecoin platform. We move fast, we think rigorously, and hold ourselves to the highest standard in the industry.
Cyclops Culture
Don’t join Cyclops if you’re looking for a typical 9-5. The culture we’ve built is one of first-principles thinking and relentless execution. We wake up every day excited to deliver great products worthy of the world’s best companies. Everyone who works at Cyclops must have a founder mindset, where no problem is too big to solve.
Originally posted on Himalayas