Go Backend Developer

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 track their collections with data-rich tools showcasing Pokémon, MTG, Lorcana, One Piece, and more. The company has achieved 10x revenue growth over the last 6 months, is profitable, and is building a team to define the category.

The team is a fast-moving 10-person product team, seeking passionate TCG enthusiasts to join.

The Role

We’re hiring a Go Backend Developer to build the services and APIs powering Rare Candy, including collection management, marketplace transactions, and Instapacks.

You’ll collaborate closely with the CTO and engineering team to deliver backend features that collectors rely on daily. This is a hands-on product engineering role for someone with expertise in Go, APIs, and relational databases, eager to grow quickly in a fast-paced startup.

You won’t be drowning in tickets—you’ll tackle real product challenges, learn from experienced engineers, and see your work directly enhance the experience of passionate collectors.

If you love trading cards or collector communities and want to accelerate your career, this role is for you.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 days: You’ll get the backend running locally, grasp the core services and data models, and ship your first meaningful fixes or features.

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

By the end of year one: You’ll be a reliable backend contributor across critical product areas. You’ll have shipped meaningful API and service improvements, strengthened your Go and database design skills, and earned ownership over increasingly important features.

What You'll Do

• Build and enhance backend services in Go for Rare Candy’s collector-facing product.

• Develop and maintain GraphQL APIs, collaborating with mobile and frontend engineers to create clear, usable API contracts.

• Design and refine relational data models, write efficient SQL, and safely implement database changes.

• Implement business logic, background jobs, and third-party integrations supporting collections, marketplace activity, and Instapacks.

• Write automated tests, debug production bugs, and improve reliability and performance using logs and metrics.

• Work closely with product, design, and engineering teams to turn ideas into shipped experiences.

• Learn quickly, ask insightful questions, and communicate clearly when something is blocked, unclear, or ready for review.

A Day in Your Life at Rare Candy

Your day starts reviewing feedback on a feature you shipped yesterday and checking for backend errors.

Mid-morning, you pair 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 implement service logic in Go, refine a database query, and write tests for an edge case.

Later in the day, you participate in a product discussion about user preferences for showcasing favorite pulls, bringing both your backend expertise and TCG knowledge 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 prioritize correctness, reliability, and maintainable code. You consider edge cases like failed requests, duplicate requests, or unexpected data.

• You’re comfortable using logs and debugging tools to trace issues through APIs, services, or databases.

• You thrive in a fast-moving startup where priorities shift and the best approach is often “figure it out, then improve it.”

• You understand the trading-card or collector world—you collect, play, rip packs, follow the market, or have deep fluency in a similar collectible space.

What You'll Need to Thrive Here

You’re expected to take ownership of your role at Rare Candy and drive your own growth. You’ll receive 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 enjoy building internal tools, solving operational issues, and creating tools you’d actually use yourself, you’ll excel here.

Why Join Us Now

• Work on features collectors care about and use daily.

• Gain 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 deeply cares about the hobby.

• Competitive startup compensation, meaningful equity upside, and a salary range of $160,000-$180,000.

• Full benefits: health, dental, vision coverage, 401(k), and a wellness stipend.

• A monthly dogfooding budget to spend on cards, as we hire people who love this hobby.