About the Role

The Dynamic Application Platform is the engine behind Happen Bank's consumer product suite - a graph-driven orchestration platform that lets product teams compose, launch, and evolve application experiences across lending, deposits, and beyond. As a Principal Backend Engineer on this team, you'll set the technical direction for the platform and keep it reliable and performant as consumer volume grows, staying hands-on in the code every day. This is a high-visibility role with impact across every consumer-facing product that builds on the platform.

What You'll Do

• Set the architecture and technical direction for the Dynamic Application Platform, defining the patterns and standards that let it scale across every consumer product that depends on it
• Design and build core platform services in Java and Spring Boot, staying hands-on in production code and setting the bar for quality through the work itself
• Own the reliability, availability, and performance of the platform under growing consumer traffic, hardening the orchestration and graph engine and its integrations across many downstream services
• Lead complex, ambiguous technical initiatives from system design through delivery, including modernizing the platform's foundations where it unlocks better outcomes
• Establish platform-wide engineering standards and guardrails, and drive alignment on shared architecture across multiple consumer product teams
• Raise the bar for how AI shows up in the team's work and in the platform itself - using AI to accelerate design, development, and review, and helping embed AI capabilities into the platform where they improve outcomes, while setting responsible-use standards for quality, data integrity, and maintainability
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to translate business goals into technical strategy and a platform roadmap
• Mentor and grow senior engineers through design review, pairing, and technical coaching, multiplying the team's impact well beyond your own output

About You

• 10+ years of backend software engineering experience, and a bachelor's degree or higher, or equivalent combination of education and work experience
• Deep expertise building backend services in Java and Spring Boot, with strong command of AWS, and both relational and NoSQL data stores
• A track record designing distributed systems for high availability and resilience at consumer scale, along with clean, well-versioned APIs and service contracts across many integrated services
• Fluency modeling complex application logic as workflows, graphs, state machines, or configuration, and reasoning clearly about how those models behave at runtime
• You lead with strategy and system design while staying deeply hands-on, setting technical direction that other engineers build on
• You bring sound judgment to high-stakes, ambiguous problems and make decisions that balance speed against long-term maintainability, security, and cost
• You apply AI to complex engineering work to unlock better outcomes, not just speed, and you hold a high bar for responsible use - security, data integrity, model governance, and the long-term cost of decisions made in the name of speed
• You multiply the people around you, mentoring senior engineers, elevating standards, and building alignment across teams through influence rather than authority

Nice to Have

• Experience in financial services, lending, or another regulated domain, along with familiarity with the compliance considerations that come with it
• Hands-on experience building graph-based, workflow, or rules-engine orchestration platforms that other teams build on top of

Work Location
San Francisco

The above locations are eligible offices for this role. The locations have been determined to foster in-person collaboration with this role's team or the related business lines. We utilize a hybrid work model, and our teams are in-office Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. In-person attendance is essential for this role's success, and remote placement will not be considered. Happen Bank offers relocation, based on actual job level.

Time Zone Requirements
Local hours (PT)

While the position will primarily work local hours, Happen Bank is headquartered in Pacific Time and our ideal candidate will be flexible working across time zones when necessary.

Travel Requirements
As needed travel to Happen Bank offices and/or other locations, as needed.

Compensation
The target base salary range for this position is 197,000-232,000. The base salary of the role will be determined by job-related knowledge, experience, education, skills, and location. Base salary is just one part of Happen Bank's Total Rewards package. You may also be eligible for long-term awards (equity) and an annual bonus (which is based on company performance, employee performance and eligible earnings).

We're creating new financial services solutions for our members based on fairness, simplicity, and heart, and we treat our employees the same way. We offer a competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision plans for employees and their families, 401(k) match, health and wellness programs, flexible time off policies for salaried employees, up to 16 weeks paid parental leave and more.

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