Software Engineer, Backend

Ascent is a leading provider of innovative financial products and student support services that enable more students to access education and achieve academic and economic success. Everything Ascent offers is designed with the best-in-class teams and technology to increase every student's ability to plan, pay, and succeed in their education and career. Ascent's planning tools and financing resources are co-created by students for those in college, graduate school, and career training programs. Ascent offers financial wellness education, student success services, and one-on-one and digital career coaching that put students' academic and professional goals within reach. Ascent has been widely recognized for its strong culture – named “Best Places to Work” by the San Diego Business Journal for the past 5 years – and as an industry leader – named “Best Student Loan” by NerdWallet for the past 3 years.

What You Will Be Doing: The Software Engineer (“Engineer”) will help design, build, and evolve backend platform services that support critical lending and internal product workflows. This role is best suited for an engineer who is strong in Golang, API-driven systems, and pragmatic backend design. The ideal candidate can translate business needs into clean technical solutions, work effectively across functions, and deliver reliable, maintainable software in an agile environment. Experience in financial services or other regulated environments is a plus.

In This Role, You Will:

• Design, build, and enhance backend services and APIs that support critical platform capabilities across lending and internal product workflows.
• Help migrate business logic from legacy applications into modern Golang-based platform services, with attention to scalability, maintainability, and long-term platform health.
• Improve system quality through strong testing, performance optimization, observability, and practical fixes to bottlenecks and reliability issues.
• Contribute to engineering excellence through code reviews, CI/CD, release readiness, and mentorship of other engineers.

Desired Skills & Expertise:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of software engineering experience delivering production systems across the full software development life cycle.
• Hands-on experience with Golang and building backend services, APIs, and distributed systems in production environments.
• Experience developing RESTful APIs, service-oriented architectures, and relational data models with strong attention to performance and reliability.
• Knowledge and hands-on experience with relational databases, particularly Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) and/or PostgreSQL; experience with Golang GORM framework is a plus.
• Understanding of cloud-based software development and deployment, preferably on AWS, along with modern CI/CD practices; familiarity with Terraform is a plus.
• Strong grounding in computer science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and debugging.
• Experience with backend testing strategies, Git-based source control, and collaborative development in agile teams.
• Experience in financial services, lending, or other regulated environments is a plus.

Qualities We Look For In Our Candidates:

• Strong ownership mindset with a bias for action and a commitment to delivering durable, high-quality solutions.
• Pragmatic problem-solver who can balance speed, quality, maintainability, and business impact.
• Collaborative teammate who communicates clearly, works well across functions, and helps elevate the engineering bar for the team.
• Continuous learner who brings curiosity, sound judgment, and a passion for improving systems, processes, and team effectiveness.

Competitive pay with bonus, and comprehensive benefits package that includes, but not limited to:

• Compensation includes base salary of $90,000 - $115,000 commensurate with experience, plus bonus and options.
• Company Stock Options
• 401(k) + Company Match
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Annual HSA contribution of $1,700
• Life insurance, disability, and critical illness
• 14 Paid Holidays! Eleven (11) + Two (2) Community Days + Your Birthday!
• Snacks and drinks in the office
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Generous paid leave policies
• $2,000 Vacation Incentive Plan after 3 years + $1,000 Sabbatical Day
• Wellness, Work from Home funds, and more!

The Job Description is intended to be a general representation of the responsibilities and requirements of the job. However, the description may not be all-inclusive, and responsibilities and requirements are subject to change.