Backend Developer

About the role:

Do you want to have a direct impact on a company’s bottom line and work for a highly profitable, stable, private company? Are you a problem solver that likes to learn new technologies and apply those to real-world problems? Do you want to share your knowledge and learn within a strong team looking to always get better?

8am has numerous openings for team members interested in growing their depth and breadth of knowledge in a Scala ecosystem running in the AWS cloud. This platform utilizes tools such as Apache Kafka, AWS RDS, Kubernetes, and many others in order to process billions of dollars of transactions for our professional services customers.

You will be welcomed onto a team of hardworking engineers willing to invest themselves in helping you become the best software engineer you can be. And, our senior engineers have the opportunity to mentor and develop more junior engineers as well. We take our jobs seriously, and we also want to have fun and be a part of the fantastic 8am culture that makes us one of Built In's Best Places to Work!

We’re transforming the world of payments by solving unique challenges

• Focus on Quality: Because we process billions of dollars in transactions for clients every year, we set an extraordinarily high bar for quality and availability
• Accept Payments Globally: We are building solutions that must keep up with global payment capabilities, financial flows, and payment types
• Make Payments Effortless: We make getting paid effortless for solo practitioners as well as some of the largest law firms in the world, whether they’re using our software or a partner’s
• Build Scalable Systems: We’re building event-sourced, reactive systems that must stay scalable and manageable
• End-to-End Security: Keeping data secure is critical to our business and to maintaining the trust of our customers
• Build a Partner Ecosystem: We’re making integrations quicker and easier to grow our list of 70+ integrated partners

About us:

Founded in 2005, 8am™ (formerly AffiniPay) is the professional business platform built to help legal, accounting, and other client-focused professionals run stronger, more profitable businesses. Today, more than 250,000 professionals across the U.S. trust 8am to help them work smarter, serve clients better, and unlock their full potential. We have been recognized as one of Inc 5000’s fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 13 years in a row, and as a result, our teams continue to grow as well!

What you'll do:

• Continuously deliver quality, secure, and high-availability APIs for both internal customers and partners in a timely manner
• Plan solutions for business needs and technical problems through unambiguous, comprehensive, and forward-thinking software designs
• Develop message-based APIs for asynchronous command and domain event processing and REST APIs
• Research and propose new technologies, industry trends, and best practices to propel our team and product forward
• Coordinate with DevOps and Quality Engineers to facilitate containerized software deployments; including debugging and troubleshooting
• Work in a close-knit team environment to achieve engineering goals and make a positive impact
• Mentor and proactively lead in areas of expertise within team and engineering organization
• Learn and develop expertise in Scala functional programming and related frameworks

About you:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering
• Experience with professional software development through server-side programming languages (e.g., Scala, Java, Python)
• Demonstrates strong software design and problem solving skills and is open to learning new programming languages, design patterns, and technologies
• Experience monitoring and debugging large-scale solutions in cloud-based environments such as AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, etc.
• Experience developing scalable and performant database structures in SQL and RDBMS environments
• Experience with event sourcing systems utilizing streams and messages
• History of assisting with deployment activities; experience with containerized applications, such as Kubernetes, is preferred
• Desire to contribute and participate in our culture of continuous improvement
• Sees the importance of strong teamwork and effective communication
• Proficient in English
• Preferred Location: Bogota or Medellin, Colombia

Nice-to-Haves

• Knowledgeable in Scala frameworks, tools, and utilities such as Akka/Pekko, Slick, and Cats
• Practical experience with Apache Kafka is preferred while experience using AWS Kinesis, GCP Pub/Sub, AMQP, or other relevant systems is acceptable
• Practical experience with AWS RDS (MySQL or Postgres engines) is preferred while experience using other RDBMS is acceptable
• Knowledgeable in datastores utilizing JSON data structures
• Practical experience deploying environments using Linux, Docker, EC2, and/or Kubernetes (experience with Helm is a plus)
• Familiarity with distributed programming techniques
• Familiarity with security-related development practices and cross-domain API access
• Experience writing JSON:API payloads
• Experience using Datadog

Diversity, equity & inclusion at 8am

At 8am, we recognize that innovation occurs with a strong team of people who are diverse in background, personality, talent and ideas. Experience comes in many forms and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace where we continue to learn from each other is an integral part of our culture. We are committed to creating a welcoming and transparent environment for all that embraces those differences through education, equal access to opportunities and information, inclusionary programs, and community outreach. 

Why 8am 

At 8am, our culture is shaped by the people who bring it to life every day. Together, we build a company rooted in continuous learning, genuine community, holistic wellness, and meaningful engagement—values that empower us as individuals and unite us as a team. Our culture is grounded in our core values: Work Smart, Win Fast; Outshine Ordinary, and We Find a Way. These values drive how we serve our customers and work with each other in a collaborative, inspiring, and empowering environment, every day.

Here’s how we support our 8Team:

• Statutory Benefits – Full compliance with Colombian social security (health, pension, and risk coverage)
• Staff Referral Bonus – Rewards for referring great candidates to the 8Team
• Paid Sick Leave – Covered from day one, with EPS support after the 2nd day
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) – Up to 15 paid days off per year
• Parental Leave – Maternity and paternity leave in line with Colombian law
• Company Holidays – Paid time off for all official Colombian public holidays

Security advisory

Our hiring teams at 8am are dedicated to recruiting top talent that share our passion for serving the professional services industry through innovative financial technology.  As such, our Talent Acquisition Team only follows legitimate hiring practices.  We will always communicate with our candidates using emails with the 8am domain and will never ask for sensitive/personal data during the application process.  All interviews take place over phone call, Zoom/Google Meet or in person.  All offers are communicated verbally by our Talent Acquisition Specialists with a written offer letter as a follow up.