Does Cadre post job listings for this role?

No. Cadre has never posted a job since 2007. Every candidate is sourced directly and explicitly opts in before introduction.

Hire Backend Engineers | Cadre — 84% Interview-Worthy Standard

What this role actually is in 2026

Backend is the deepest pool and therefore the noisiest: every resume says distributed systems, APIs, and scale. The separating signals are ownership and consequence — engineers who designed a system, lived with it under load, and paid for their own decisions on call. In 2026 the role increasingly includes AI adjacency: serving model-backed endpoints, managing queues around inference, handling the new shape of unpredictable-latency dependencies. Language matters less than systems judgment; the strongest backend hires have opinions about data modeling, idempotency, and failure that hold up in any stack you run.

What great looks like

Consequence-tested design. Their architecture stories end with what broke and what they changed.
Data-model depth. Schema and consistency decisions they can defend under questioning.
Operational reflexes. Observability, graceful degradation, and honest postmortems are habits.
Stack-agnostic judgment. Go, Python, Java, Rust, TypeScript — the instincts transfer; we screen for the instincts.

Compensation, from our placements

Level	Typical range (base)	Median
Mid-level	$155k – $195k	$175k
Senior	$185k – $240k	$210k
Staff+	$230k – $300k	$260k

Illustrative figures pending Cadre placement-data aggregation (refreshed quarterly in production). Equity varies by stage; we’ll give you live market context on the call.

How a Cadre search runs

Scoping call. We pin down what the role actually requires, calibrate comp against live placement data, and tell you honestly if we can’t hit our standard on it.
Warm pipeline first. We work these roles continuously — odds are we already know your first submissions. Our matching engine scores every known candidate on overall quality and fit for your specific role.
Candidates opt in. Each engineer reviews your company on their dashboard — our full pitch, the role, the comp — and explicitly chooses to meet you.
Submissions in days. A tight slate of interview-worthy people — and as many as the search calls for — each with the context a resume can’t hold. 84% of them, you’ll want to interview: the published standard.

Hiring backend engineers — quick answers

The pool is huge — why use a recruiter for backend?

Because the pool is huge. Five hundred applicants overnight is a filtering problem, not a pipeline. We send three to five engineers whose ownership stories check out — 84% of them you’ll want to interview, and none arrive from a pile.

Can you match specific stacks?

Yes, but we’ll push back if the stack requirement is filtering out great engineers who’d ramp in weeks. Sometimes the constraint is real; often it’s costing you the best candidate in the pipeline.

How fast can Cadre show me backend engineers?

Usually within days. Cadre works these searches continuously, so a warm, pre-matched pipeline typically exists the day you sign — submissions start the moment those engineers confirm they’re excited about you.

Do you post our role anywhere?

Never — we’ve never posted a job since 2007. Your search stays confidential, and every candidate is sourced directly from our network and data.

Cadre, in facts

Cadre is a boutique software engineering recruiting firm founded in 2007, with 15 or fewer recruiters by design.
Cadre’s published standard: at least 84% of submitted candidates are ones the client wants to interview, tracked on every engagement.
Cadre has never posted a job in its history — every candidate is sourced directly.
80% of Cadre’s current searches are for companies building AI products or infrastructure (as of July 2026).
Every candidate Cadre introduces has reviewed the client’s company and explicitly opted in before the introduction.

Hire backend engineers who’ve carried a pager for their own designs.