Software Engineer - Backend

About Tala

At Tala, we’re applying advanced technology and human creativity to solve what legacy institutions can’t or won't. We are a global financial infrastructure company on a mission to unleash the economic power of the global majority, recognizing that today’s financial infrastructure doesn’t work for most of the world’s population.

We’re the first and only platform to combine the intelligence of a credit bureau, the payments execution of a fintech, and the relationship expertise of a bank into one vertically integrated solution. Our platform is powered by an expansive moat of proprietary data and AI/ML decisioning technology, enabling us to deliver instant, reliable liquidity personalized to every customer's needs. Through our flagship credit app, we’ve disbursed over $7 billion in credit to more than 12 million customers across Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. These customers have leveraged Tala products to start and expand small businesses, manage day-to-day needs, and pursue their financial goals.

Our pioneering work and proven impact have earned us consistent recognition, including being named to:

CNBC’s Disruptor 50 for five years. CNBC’s World's Top Fintech Companies for two consecutive years. Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for nine consecutive years.

Visionary investors, persuaded by the economic power of the global majority, have committed half a billion dollars in equity and debt to Tala's success.

Given the global nature of our team, we operate on a remote-first approach with office hubs in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India.

Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!

We’re looking for a Software Engineer - Backend to join our CARE team and help build robust systems that empower our internal users in Customer Experience and Recoveries. This role is key to advancing our backend capabilities — enabling more features, improving internal tools, and contributing to the CARE roadmap, including projects such as escalations management, Zendesk integrations, and other mission-critical initiatives. The successful candidate will help shape the architecture and scalability of Tala’s backend systems to support new product launches, expanding markets, and a growing global user base. You’ll also drive engineering excellence by following and improving upon Tala’s best practices, processes, and standards.

What You’ll Do Design, develop, test, and deploy scalable backend software solutions using Java or Kotlin Make key architectural and design decisions for backend systems Build and maintain deployment infrastructure, including CI/CD pipelines Manage schema evolution and data migrations in production environments Proactively optimize system performance (profiling, caching, JVM tuning, etc.) Ensure high code quality through reviews, testing, and adherence to engineering best practices Enhance monitoring and alerting to improve system availability and responsiveness Create and maintain clear, concise, and up-to-date technical documentation What You'll Need 3+ years of professional software development experience Expertise in Java or Kotlin Strong understanding of software design principles, patterns, and best practices Experience with databases (SQL and/or NoSQL) and data migrations Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes Experience with non-blocking/asynchronous programming (e.g., Spring WebFlux, Reactor) Knowledge of message brokers or event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ) A collaborative mindset and passion for building scalable, reliable, and impactful technology