12 remote backend jobs paying $160K+

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Hey there,

Remote backend work pays, and there is more of it than the return-to-office headlines suggest. When we pulled 188 companies' public job boards on Oct 6, we found 180 backend, platform and infrastructure roles at 37 companies that were fully remote and posted a US-dollar range reaching $160K or more. Backend stacks lean remote in general, too: on Dev List's salary pages, 79% of new NodeJS postings in the last 30 days were remote.

12 remote backend jobs paying $160K+

We only kept roles where the posting itself says remote (not hybrid) and gives a range. Pay is the range the company posted. Most are US-only, and the line says so.

1. Hex: Software Engineer, Backend (Platform). $198,750 – $295,000 plus equity. Remote, US. Backend platform for a data notebook product, posted floor near $200K.

2. Vercel: Software Engineer, Backend. $196,000-$294,000. Remote, US. Backend at the company behind Next.js.

3. LaunchDarkly: Senior Backend Engineer, Billing. $191,800 - $263,670 (first of several posted ranges). Remote, US. Billing systems: unglamorous, always needed, and well paid.

4. Affirm: Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Card Ledger & Money Movement). $195,000 - $255,000 (first of several posted ranges). Remote, US. Ledger and money-movement work, a skill fintechs pay for.

5. Affirm: Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Search). $230,000 - $290,000. Remote, US. Staff-level search backend.

6. Render: Software Engineer, Infrastructure (all levels). $170K – $290K plus equity. Remote, US or Canada. All levels, so mid-career engineers can apply too.

7. WorkOS: Infrastructure Engineer. $175K – $275K plus equity. Remote, US or Canada. Infrastructure for an auth and identity API.

8. Pinecone: Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Search & Retrieval Infrastructure. $190K – $270K plus equity. Remote, US. Vector search, the retrieval layer behind many AI apps.

9. Vanta: Backend Senior Software Engineer, Identity. $195K – $263K plus equity. Remote, US. Identity backend at a security compliance company.

10. Discord: Staff Software Engineer, Experimentation Platform. $248,000 to $279,000. Remote, US. Experimentation platform at a very large consumer app.

11. Temporal: Senior Staff Engineer, Open Source Server. $208,000 – $341,250 plus equity. Remote, US. Work on an open-source server that many backends run on.

12. Nextdoor: Senior Software Engineer - Backend. $165,000 to $250,000. Remote, US. Plain backend title, wide band, fully remote.

What these postings reward

Look at the titles and a pattern shows up: billing, ledgers, identity, search, experimentation, infrastructure. These are systems where mistakes cost real money, so expect the interviews to dig into what you have actually owned. On your resume, name the system you ran and the number it moved (requests per second, dollars reconciled, incidents cut), not just the language you wrote it in.

Before you apply, run your resume against the posting in Jobscan. It shows which keywords from the job description you're missing. (Affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.)

Sources: Dev List NodeJS salary page (last 30 days, pulled October 2026)

See you next time,
Dev List