Staff Backend Engineer, Custody

About Betterment:

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission: making people’s lives better. We’re headquartered in NYC, and offer hybrid NY-based (three days/week in-office).

About the Role:

Backend Systems is the core of the Betterment platform. On a busy day, we need to securely move millions of dollars through the Betterment system. At the same time, every transaction must flow through a complicated series of risk checks to ensure strict regulatory compliance. Every ounce of efficiency and intelligence we pour into this system translates into more value for our customers. We’re looking for engineers to help us answer some of our most difficult backend scaling, software design, and optimization questions. As a Staff Engineer on our backend teams, you'll help balance on-time delivery of new platform features alongside system stability and scale, all while helping mentor and grow a team of amazing engineers.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range we would offer for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. 

• New York City: $195,000 - $225,000

We offer a competitive equity package, health, dental and vision benefits, life and AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance, EAP, commuter and parking benefits FSA/HSA, and 401(k) with employer match as well as a flexible PTO policy. This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus.  For jobs based out of our NYC HQ, we require in office attendance Tuesday through Thursday, weekly.

A Day in the Life:

• Drive the technical vision and long-term strategy of the team
• Build innovative trading and money-movement technology that empowers people to make the most of their money, so they can live better
• Solve “impossible” problems. Take your ideas to the next level right away. We experiment, iterate, learn, and repeat
• Uphold a standard of excellence in your work, continuously seeking improvement and welcoming guidance from more experienced engineers
• Collaborate with purpose. You’ll work in small groups with other talented thinkers and figure out how to make Betterment’s software even better
• Gain trust through transparency. We believe in taking the guesswork out of investing. That means a consistent experience for our customers — you’ll build the tools to make it possible
• Create efficiency. Our software helps customers save time and money. We maintain it through clean code, pragmatic programming, and lean engineering
• Contribute to an environment of open communication where engineers feel empowered to share ideas and take initiative to solve problems that achieve company objectives
• Support the growth of other engineers by providing specific feedback and building ownership redundancy in your domain

What We’re Looking For:

• 8+ years of professional expertise in at least one object oriented language, such as Java, C#, C++, Go, Scala, or Python. We build our apps in Java
• 8+ years professional experience with SQL and relational databases
• A strong command of domain driven design and building large scale, fault tolerant distributed systems
• Proven ability to lead and manage projects that may engage one or more teams, considering tradeoffs to balance predictable delivery while maintaining high standards of quality, performance and security
• A track record of developing and maintaining a long-term technical roadmap, creating project plans and leading others through their implementation
• Mentorship of other smart, passionate developers, fostering best practices and positively impacting growth in their role
• Partnership with business stakeholders, product owners, and other technical leads on project plans and product roadmaps
• An understanding of how to make the tradeoffs required to ship without compromising quality
• Appreciation for agility and pragmatism in software development