Senior Backend Engineer

About Tally

At Tally, we're building a modern accounting platform that helps SMEs spend less time managing their finances and more time running their businesses.

Accounting is full of repetitive, manual processes that are difficult to automate reliably. We're changing that by combining AI with solid software engineering practices to handle financial workflows from start to finish.

We're tackling complex engineering challenges, from processing financial documents to managing workflows that span weeks. We're building systems that businesses can trust with their finances, where accuracy, reliability, and traceability matter just as much as moving fast.

What You'll Work On

As a Senior Backend Engineer at Tally, you'll help shape and build the platform and have ownership over what you build, from technical decisions to production.

• Build end-to-end features: Work across the stack, from backend services and APIs to user-facing experiences.
• Make AI useful in production: Build AI-powered workflows that handle real accounting tasks, combining LLMs with deterministic logic, validation, and human oversight where needed.
• Design reliable workflows: Build systems that manage long-running processes, handle failures gracefully, and recover without losing track of what's happened.
• Work with financial data: Extract, process, and reconcile information from invoices, receipts, bank transactions, and other financial documents.
• Shape our engineering foundations: Help define our architecture, development practices, and technical direction as the product and team grow.

What We're Looking For

• Strong engineering fundamentals: Experience designing, building, and maintaining production systems, with a solid understanding of architecture, databases, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Python experience: You're comfortable building backend applications in Python. Experience with Django and PostgreSQL is a plus.
• Pragmatic problem-solving: You know when to keep things simple, when to invest in more robust solutions, and how to balance speed with maintainability.
• Ownership and collaboration: You can take a problem from idea to production, make independent decisions, and work closely with both technical and non-technical teammates.
• Interest in AI engineering: You're curious about building software with LLMs and agentic workflows. Hands-on experience is a strong plus, but not required.

You don't need a machine learning research background or experience in accounting or fintech. We're looking for someone who understands how to turn AI capabilities into reliable software that solves real problems.

Our Tech Stack

• Backend: Python, Django, PostgreSQL
• Infrastructure: Google Cloud (GCP)
• Frontend: React

Our stack is evolving, and you'll have a say in the technical decisions we make. Experience with these technologies is a plus, but strong engineering fundamentals matter more.

What to Expect

• This is an in-office position, 5 days a week, in Lisbon. We believe great early-stage teams are built in the same room.
• Our product is still early. Some things are rough, and there's plenty to figure out. That's part of the opportunity to make a real impact.
• You'll wear multiple hats, work beyond your usual responsibilities, and help wherever you're needed. That won't change anytime soon.
• We expect you to use AI tools to move faster, experiment, and focus on what matters. What counts is the quality of what you build, not how many lines of code you write.