Job Description

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We're hiring a Backend Team Lead (Ruby on Rails) to lead and grow one of our core engineering squads.

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Valiant Finance is an award-winning FinTech startup on a mission to simplify business lending. Our cloud-based platform helps thousands of Australian small businesses compare and apply for loans from over 80 of the country's leading lenders. Our platform doesn't just power our own services – it also drives the commercial lending capabilities for some of the world's most recognised brands.

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Our global Enterprise technology arm provides embedded finance infrastructure to equipment vendors, manufacturers and funding partners. We pride ourselves on building and delivering category-leading tech products across the US, Australia and the UK for top-tier global businesses.

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We have a strong growth agenda and are always looking for top talent to join the pursuit of our vision to unleash the economic potential of every idea!

About the Role n

We're looking for a Backend Team Lead to lead a squad of engineers building the platform behind our lending marketplace and Enterprise embedded finance products. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll own your team's growth, delivery and engineering standards, while staying close to the code as the senior Rails voice on architecture and design decisions.

What You'll Be Doing n

People Leadership:

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- Lead, coach, and level up other engineers through regular 1:1s, structured career paths, and technical guidance.
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- Establish and enforce best practices across testing, code reviews, documentation, and automated CI/CD deployment pipelines.
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- Shape how the team uses AI-assisted development, and keep AI-assisted work to the same quality standard as all other work.
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- Foster an inclusive, high-performing engineering culture grounded in psychological safety and continuous learning.
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Architecture & Engineering:

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- Architect, build, and maintain highly scalable, secure, and resilient public/private RESTful APIs powering our core product and enterprise partners.
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- Design resilient integrations with third-party systems (Salesforce, Auth0, Cloudflare and more) that protect platform stability and data consistency.
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- Own and optimise our cloud infrastructure and high-volume data architecture across multiple regions.
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- Help lead our engineering compliance work (SOC2, GDPR) alongside our security team.
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- Set the benchmark for clean architecture, domain-driven design, and comprehensive test coverage while modernising legacy domains and instilling long-term maintainability standards across the team.
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Delivery & Collaboration:

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- Partner directly with Product Leadership to translate commercial strategy into technical roadmaps, weigh trade-offs, and decompose complex epics into clear execution phases.
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- Balance rapid feature delivery ('Get S#!t Done') with long-term platform health, architecture scaling, and technical debt reduction.
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- Structure and optimise team workflows using Linear/Jira/similar to maintain backlog hygiene, measure velocity, and establish clear, predictable delivery rhythms.
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Required Experience nn
- Core Stack: 7+ years of commercial Ruby on Rails development experience.
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- Team Leadership: Proven track record leading a squad of backend engineers in a fast-paced tech or scale-up environment, including 1:1s, performance conversations and hiring.
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- System Architecture: Strong background designing distributed systems, asynchronous processing workflows (Sidekiq), and complex PostgreSQL schemas.
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- DevOps & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience managing and deploying cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS or Heroku) via CI/CD pipelines.
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- Testing & Quality: Deep familiarity with testing frameworks like RSpec and modern automated deployment strategies.
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- Security & Compliance: Solid understanding of application security principles, API authentication, and secure coding practices (e.g., OWASP).
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- Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical decisions for business stakeholders.
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Bonus Points nn
- Experience in high-volume production environments with strict availability SLAs.
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- Knowledge of the financial services industry (lending or corporate finance).
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- Experience navigating GDPR and/or SOC2 compliance frameworks.
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- Experience with Salesforce or CRM data integration.
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- Experience with multi-region platforms.
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Benefits & Culture n

We're a remote-friendly team, but if you prefer an office environment, our Surry Hills space is open, dog-friendly, and empowering. We foster a culture where innovation is recognised and rewarded.

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- Embrace your need for work-life balance with our hybrid working model
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- Celebrate the joy of starting a family with 8 weeks of paid parental leave
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- Bring your furry friend to hang out in our brand recent, dog-friendly office
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- Company-wide events designed to honour and celebrate all the outstanding achievements of our amazing team
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Most importantly, we're looking for someone who is ready to embody our core values:

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- "Get S#!t Done"
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- Thrive in the Pride
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- Be customer champions
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#J-18808-Ljbffr

📌 Lead Backend Developer (New South Wales)
🏢 Valiant Finance
📍 New South Wales