Go Backend Engineer (m/f/d) - REMOTE

GO BACKEND DEVELOPER

Fully Remote

Compensation: $160,000 - 180,000, competitive startup comp, and meaningful equity upside

Department: Engineering

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 hiring a Go Backend Developer to help build the services and APIs that power Rare Candy, from managing collections and marketplace transactions to opening Instapacks.

You’ll work closely with the CTO and engineering team to ship backend features that collectors rely on every day. This is a hands-on product engineering role for someone who already knows how to build in Go, has experience with APIs and relational databases, and wants to grow quickly inside a fast-moving startup.

If you love trading cards or collector communities and want to level up fast, this is a role for you.

You get the backend running locally, understand the core services and data models, and ship your first meaningful fixes or small features.

By day 90: You’re regularly shipping backend work with support from the CTO and engineering team. You can take a well-scoped feature, ask the right questions, implement it cleanly in Go, test it, and help deploy and verify it in production.

You’ve shipped meaningful improvements to our APIs and services, strengthened your skills in Go and database design, and earned ownership over increasingly important features.

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.
• 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.

You close the day by opening a PR with a clear summary, test coverage, and notes about any database changes or rollout considerations.

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 worked with relational databases and SQL, including schema design, joins, indexes, and transactions.
• 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 collect, play, rip packs, follow the market, or have real fluency in a similar collectible space.

The systems are still evolving, the team is small, and your work will matter immediately. 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.

Get real ownership early in your career while learning directly from experienced engineering leadership.

• Join a high-trust, low-ego team that ships fast, celebrates wins, and cares deeply about the hobby.
• 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.
• Describe a Go service you built. What did you own, what technical choices did you make, and what was the result?
• What trading-card or collector communities do you understand best? We celebrate individuality, from Pikachu collectors to Planeswalker pros, and are committed to building an inclusive team.