# Backend Engineer, Payments at Speak

- Company: Speak
- What the company does: Speak is the first & only app that lets you get real conversational practice without needing a live tutor on the other end. And we build some serious AI tech to make that possible. Backed by Accel, Khosla and Y Combinator.
- Company website: https://www.speak.com/
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Mid level
- Location: San Francisco
- Work setup: Remote
- Pay: $220K to $280K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-11-02
- Apply by: 2026-12-17
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/speak/607e0571-9459-487c-8c9d-03248993aae8?utm_source=1752vc&utm_medium=careers
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/speak-backend-engineer-payments/

## About the role

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to become Speak's first dedicated owner of subscription payments. Millions of learners rely on Speak to improve their language skills, and our subscription systems power how they purchase, renew, and maintain access to the product. Getting payments right is critical to both the learner experience and our business. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.

## What they're looking for

- Staff-level engineering experience. Typically 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of independently owning complex, business-critical production systems
- Consumer mobile payments expertise. You understand subscription billing on the Apple App Store and Google Play, including how purchases, subscription state changes, and entitlements flow through backend systems
- Experience with subscription payment providers. Hands-on experience with RevenueCat, Paddle, Stripe Billing, or comparable platforms
- A strong foundation in distributed systems. You're comfortable reasoning about asynchronous events, consistency, retries, idempotency, reconciliation, and failure recovery across multiple systems
- Strong backend engineering skills. Experience designing and operating reliable backend services and relational databases. Our stack includes Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and GCP, but we're open to engineers with strong fundamentals in other technologies
- A track record of improving reliability. You've identified consequential production risks, investigated incidents, and implemented durable improvements that measurably reduced failures or customer impact

Tags: Engineering

Source: 1752vc Careers, https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/speak-backend-engineer-payments/