Rare Candy - Go Backend Developer
Requirements
• You’ve worked with relational databases and SQL, including schema design, joins, indexes, and transactions. • You care about correctness, reliability, and maintainable code. You think through what happens when a request fails, runs twice, or encounters unexpected data. • You’re comfortable using logs and debugging tools to trace a problem through an API, service, or database. • You’re comfortable in a fast-moving startup where priorities can shift and the best answer is often “figure it out, then make it better.” • You know the trading-card or collector world. You collect, play, rip packs, follow the market, or have real fluency in a similar collectible space. • You’re expected to take ownership of your role at Rare Candy and drive your own growth. That doesn’t mean doing it alone. You’ll have support, context, and mentorship along the way. • The systems are still evolving, the team is small, and your work will matter immediately. You'll need to be curious, detail-oriented, and comfortable learning by doing. • If you like to build internal tools, solve operational issues, and the idea of building tools you would actually want to use yourself, you'll do great here.
Responsibilities
• Build and improve backend services in Go across Rare Candy’s collector-facing product. • Develop and maintain GraphQL APIs, collaborating with mobile and frontend engineers on clear, usable API contracts. • Design and evolve relational data models, write efficient SQL, and make database changes safely. • Implement business logic, background jobs, and third-party integrations that support collections, marketplace activity, and Instapacks. • Write automated tests, investigate production bugs, and improve reliability and performance using logs and metrics. • Work closely with product, design, and engineering to turn ideas into shipped experiences. • Learn quickly, ask good questions, and communicate clearly when something is blocked, unclear, or ready for review. • A Day in Your Life at Rare Candy • You start the morning reviewing feedback on a feature you shipped yesterday and checking for backend errors. • Mid-morning, you’re pairing with another engineer on a new API for a collection feature, working through the data model and how the mobile app will use it. • After lunch, you’re implementing the service logic in Go, tightening up a database query, and writing tests for an edge case. • Later in the day, you’re in a product discussion about how users want to showcase their favorite pulls, bringing both your backend perspective and your own TCG fluency to the conversation. • You close the day by opening a PR with a clear summary, test coverage, and notes about any database changes or rollout considerations. • You Might Be a Fit If • You have around 5-7 years of backend development experience and have shipped real features in a production system or serious side project. • You’re comfortable building in Go and understand error handling, interfaces, concurrency basics, and testing. • You’ve built or maintained APIs. GraphQL experience is a plus, and you’re comfortable learning it if your background is primarily REST. • You’ve worked with relational databases and SQL, including schema design, joins, indexes, and transactions. • You care about correctness, reliability, and maintainable code. You think through what happens when a request fails, runs twice, or encounters unexpected data. • You’re comfortable using logs and debugging tools to trace a problem through an API, service, or database. • You’re comfortable in a fast-moving startup where priorities can shift and the best answer is often “figure it out, then make it better.” • You know the trading-card or collector world. You collect, play, rip packs, follow the market, or have real fluency in a similar collectible space.
Benefits
• Department: • Reports to: • Rare Candy is revolutionizing the $25 billion trading-card industry as the “friendly local game shop” in the palm of your hands. Collectors use our AI-powered card scanner, open their favorite chase cards with Instapacks, and keep track of them with our data-rich collection tools which showcases Pokémon, MTG, Lorcana, One Piece, and more. We've hit 10x revenue growth over the last 6 months, the business is profitable, and we're building the team to take this from a great product to a category-defining one. • We're a 10-person product team moving fast and looking for the next set of TCG-obsessed rock stars to join our team. • Work on features collectors actually care about and are using everyday. • Get real ownership early in your career while learning directly from experienced engineering leadership. • Competitive startup comp, meaningful equity upside, and a salary range of $160,000-$180,000. • Full benefits: health, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k), and a wellness stipend. • A monthly dogfooding budget to spend on cards, because we hire people who love this hobby.
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