customer-facing Consumer Insights platform in San Francisco, California. This long-term contract position focuses on building reliable backend systems, delivering new features, and improving application performance in a…
Engineering & IT · San Francisco, CA
Backend Developer jobs in San Francisco, CA
Backend developers build the server-side logic, APIs, and data layers that applications run on. The job is designing services that stay correct, fast, and secure as usage grows.
438
Open roles today
$49–$128/hr
Typical pay range
$172k
Median, full-time
8
Fresh in this list
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01
Open backend developer roles
12 shown of 438 · sorted by freshness
$155k - $400k
runs the world and the pace is faster than ever. Sentry helps developers fix errors and performance issues before users notice, so teams... ...puzzles.Have strong full-stack instincts. While this role is backend- heavy,…
$150k - $180k
around the world. To learn more, go to .The Opportunity: Where Impossible Becomes PossibleThe Identity team operates the critical backend services powering the Zeta Identity Graph. How do you engineer distributed archite…
$240k - $300k
mentoring senior engineers, improving how teams plan and execute, and developing the next generation of technical leaders.Collaborate with... ...experience designing, building, and operating large-scale backend or full-s…
$173.37k - $234.56k
matter enormously.RESPONSIBILITIESBuild and maintain core features across the workflow engine, recipes, and assays — full-stack across backend services and frontend product surfacesContribute to the data modeling that un…
$194k - $267k
Secure Every Identity, from AI to Human Identity is the key to unlocking the potential of AI. Okta secures AI by building the trusted, neutral infrastructure that enables organizations to safely embrace this new era. Thi…
engineers and you will stay deep in the code. You'll personally design and build the hardest, highest-impact parts of our platform — backend services, data pipelines, and the AI/ML-powered features that increasingly defi…
We are looking for a Front-End Developer to join a well-known consumer brand in San Francisco, California. This long-term remote contract position offers the opportunity to create engaging, customer-facing web experience…
$180k - $280k
Senior Backend Engineer, Customer Data Activation Remote (North America) The Problem Marketing and growth teams are sitting on huge volumes of customer data inside their data warehouse, but turning that data into a live…
$225.5k - $265k
week. World App is already among the most used wallets globally. Developers are integrating World ID to build safer online experiences and... ..., privacy preserving, secure, scalable and reliable backend systems. Techni…
building a modern platform used by security teams. This is a hands-on backend role in a high-ownership environment where you’ll move fast,... ...the backend Collaborate with other engineers to improve developer experienc…
you are You have several years of experience building internet-based software You have experience driving technical designs for backend systems You adapt quickly and can problem solve through uncertainty You are comforta…
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What backend developers earn in San Francisco
Hourly first — that's how the offer arrives
| Experience | Hourly | Annual, full-time |
|---|---|---|
| Entry level | $49–$67 | $101k–$140k |
| Mid level | $67–$98 | $140k–$203k |
| Senior | $94–$128 | $196k–$266k |
Adjusted for the San Francisco market from national ranges.
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What employers ask for
The skills these listings keep naming
A server language (Java, Go, Python, C#)API design (REST, gRPC)SQL and schema designCaching and queuesAuthentication and securityDistributed systems basicsDocker and CI/CDObservability and logging
04
Interview questions worth rehearsing
With the thing the interviewer is actually listening for
Design an API for a feature like comments or notifications.
Clarify requirements, then cover endpoints, data model, pagination, and error handling. Mentioning versioning and rate limits shows production experience.
How would you find and fix a slow database query?
Walk through reading the query plan, checking indexes, and considering caching or denormalization. Ground it in a query you actually fixed.
How do you keep two services consistent when both need to update data?
Discuss transactions, idempotency, and eventual consistency with outbox or saga patterns. Acknowledge tradeoffs rather than promising perfect consistency.
What do you monitor on a service you own?
Name the basics — latency, error rate, saturation — plus business-level signals. Bonus points for talking about alerts you tuned to reduce noise.
Tell me about a production incident you handled.
Structure it: detection, mitigation, root cause, prevention. Emphasize what changed afterward, not just the firefight.
How do you approach securing an API?
Cover authentication, authorization, input validation, and secrets handling. Naming OWASP-style risks concretely is enough; you are not expected to be a security engineer.
When would you choose a message queue over a direct call?
Talk about decoupling, retries, and absorbing spikes, and be honest about the added complexity of async debugging.
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Resume tips that move the needle
For backend developers specifically — generic advice costs you here
01
State scale where you can: requests per second, data volume, or number of services — it is the fastest way to signal seniority.
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Name the databases and infrastructure you ran in production, not just languages.
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Describe reliability work — migrations without downtime, incident reduction, test coverage on critical paths.
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If you designed an API others consume, say so and note how many teams or clients depend on it.
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Avoid listing every framework you have touched; two stacks with depth read better than eight without.
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Where this role goes
Typical progression
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Junior Backend Developer
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Backend Developer
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Senior Backend Developer
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Staff Engineer
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Principal Engineer
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