Senior Backend Engineer

Powering digital-first and consumer-friendly credit cards is no easy task! Behind the scenes, we need to integrate with a number of third-party services (like card networks, payment processors, and credit bureaus), solve tricky distributed systems problems (like eventual consistency and idempotent workflows), and balance a number of needs (like security, reliability, performance, time-to-market, and compliance).

We achieve much of that today through a microservice architecture built primarily with Java, gRPC, and AWS tools like DynamoDB, EKS (hosted Kubernetes), and API Gateway. We also use services like Datadog (observability), LaunchDarkly (feature flags & experimentation), and VeryGoodSecurity (tokenization) to achieve a lot with a little.

We’re seeking Backend Engineers with diverse backgrounds & complementary skillsets who are passionate about building quality systems & services and achieving real-world impact. You may be a generalist who’s excited to work in many domains, or you may prefer to go deep in a few (e.g. helping us build an extensible rules engine or a highly reliable ledger).

Besides writing & reviewing code, you’ll plan work, write tech specs & review design docs, lead projects, collaborate across disciplines (e.g. with PM, design, compliance & partnerships), and mentor other engineers.

Research has shown that women & underrepresented minorities read lists of requirements and consider themselves unqualified if they don’t meet every single one. This list represents what we’re ideally looking for, but we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet everything 100%. Everyone has unique strengths & weaknesses, and we hire for strength & potential, not lack of weakness.

• Experience designing backend services & systems and scaling them in production. This is more important to us than a specific # of years of experience, but we expect most engineers to need at least 3-5 years in the industry to gain this experience.

• Experience leading projects, planning work, collaborating cross-functionally, and mentoring other engineers. A high-functioning, collaborative, and supportive environment is important to us, and you’ll play an important role in fostering that.

• Broad, high-level expertise across a modern application stack (covering e.g. databases, infrastructure, CI/CD, APIs, client apps, queueing, etc.).

• Deep, low-level expertise in some backend domain (e.g. databases, scaling, or distributed systems), in the technology/platform of your choice.

• Passion for both your craft (building things right) and achieving real-world impact (building the right things for our business & customers).

We’re headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in the Mission District (near Dolores Park). We welcome employees who want to work from this office; we offer additional benefits to those who do (see below), and relocation assistance to those who’d like to.

We’re also hiring remotely across the US for most roles. We work hard to create a first-class, remote-friendly environment, with an additional benefit for remote employees, too (see below).

We regularly bring our team together for offsites & trips, about every 2 months, both for fun and for work. We cover all travel & lodging in these cases.

A condition of employment at Cardless is being fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID prior to beginning your employment. We’ll ask you to send us a copy of your vaccination card in advance of your first day.

💸 Highly competitive salaries, significant equity, and a 401(k) plan

🏥 Top-of-the-line healthcare (medical, vision, and dental), with 100% primary coverage and 75% dependent coverage for medical

🌴 Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 15 days off per year

👶 Parental leave for birthing and non-birthing parents

✈️ Amazing team trips & offsites (e.g. rock climbing in Utah, watching a Cavs game in a suite, and staying in an Italian villa in Carmel Valley)

👥 Access to amazing advisors & investors, like Gil Shklarski (Flatiron Health CTO), Dorothy Kilroy (Airbnb & Marqeta exec), and Frank Mastrangelo (Bancorp founder)

🍱 Catered lunch at the office every day, plus plenty of snacks & drinks

🚎 $250/month commuter assistance for public transit or our parking garage