10+ years of software engineering experience with staff-level ownership of production systems
Deep experience in recurring subscription billing for consumer products
Hands-on experience with App Store/Google Play billing, Stripe Billing, or Paddle
Strong backend skills in Node.js and TypeScript or similar languages
Proven track record of enhancing payment system reliability
Ability to define and execute a roadmap in an undefined area
Excellent communication skills with cross-functional teams
Experience with AI-assisted development workflows
Responsibilities
Own the reliability of subscription payments from purchase to cancellation
Build and maintain integrations with Paddle, RevenueCat, and Stripe in Node.js
Design for correctness in payment processing and reconciliation
Implement monitoring and alerting systems for proactive issue detection
Lead incident response and postmortems for payment-related issues
Set standards for payments code changes and review related modifications
Collaborate with growth, product, finance, and support on pricing and revenue initiatives
Mentor engineers to enhance backend reliability
Benefits
Opportunity to shape the payments architecture from the ground up
High degree of autonomy in a critical revenue-generating area
Direct impact on the company's financial success
Collaborative environment with cross-functional teams
In-person work culture in San Francisco, fostering team cohesion
Full Job Description
About this role
We're hiring our first dedicated payments engineer to own the reliability of payments at Speak. Every Speak payment is a subscription, and that revenue runs through Paddle, RevenueCat (the App Store and Google Play) and Stripe, with new providers on the way. Until now, payments work has been shared across teams without a single owner. You'll be that owner: the point of contact and directly responsible engineer for how Speak bills, renews, and grants access to millions of learners.
You'll start embedded with one of our growth teams, which also owns monetization, and over time anchor payments within our platform organization. As the first engineer in this area, you'll set the architecture, standards, and roadmap for payments at Speak, with a high degree of autonomy and a direct line to revenue.
What you'll be doing
Owning the reliability of Speak's subscription payments end to end, from purchase and renewal through cancellation, refunds, and entitlements
Building and maintaining our integrations with Paddle, RevenueCat, and Stripe in Node.js, and leading the rollout of new payment providers
Designing for correctness: idempotent webhook handling, reconciliation across providers, and safe retries
Putting monitoring, alerting, and runbooks in place so payment issues are caught before learners or finance notice them
Leading incident response and postmortems for payments, and fixing root causes
Setting the standards for how other teams change payments code, and reviewing changes that touch billing
Partnering with growth, product, finance, and support on pricing, paywall experiments, and revenue reporting
Mentoring engineers and raising the reliability bar across our backend
What we're looking for
10+ years of software engineering experience, including staff-level ownership of production systems
Deep experience building and operating recurring subscription billing for a consumer product
Hands-on experience with App Store or Google Play billing (directly or through RevenueCat), Stripe Billing, or Paddle
Strong backend fundamentals in Node.js and TypeScript or a comparable language, with solid relational database skills
A track record of making payment systems more reliable: fewer incidents, cleaner reconciliation, safer migrations
Comfort defining your own roadmap in an area that doesn't have one yet
Clear communication with engineering, product, and finance partners
Contributing to an AI-native development workflow - reviewing plans and designs before implementation, creating strong verification loops, and shipping safely with AI-assisted tooling
Excited about working in person in San Francisco at least 3 days per week
Nice to haves
Migrating between payment providers or consolidating several into one system
International payments, taxes, and currencies, especially across APAC markets
Worked on an app used by 1M+ users
Built entitlement systems shared across mobile and web
