About the role

As a Backend Engineer at Cardless, you'll work across the systems that run our partners' card programs: applications and underwriting, accounts and ledgers, transactions and payments, rewards, risk, and the APIs our partners build against.

We keep this role deliberately general. There is more work than there are people, and the engineers who do best here are the ones who move to wherever the problem is. There are three kinds of work on our roadmap, and most people touch all three:

• Building things that don't exist yet, usually because a partner needs them to launch.
• Scaling and hardening what we already run, so the platform holds up as we add partners and volume.
• Laying groundwork for products we haven't launched, including bringing more of the core financial infrastructure in-house.

We care more about how you think than about what you've built before. Strong systems thinking and problem solving travel across domains. Direct experience in payments, lending, or financial infrastructure is a real advantage and we weight it heavily, but we would rather hire someone sharp who will learn this domain than someone who has only ever worked in it.

This role is open at multiple levels, from mid-level through staff. We calibrate level during the process rather than before it.

What you'll do

• Design and build backend systems that move real money, make credit decisions, and serve hundreds of thousands of cardholders
• Take projects from ambiguity to production: scoping, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and the operational life that follows
• Work across domains rather than inside a single service, going where the highest-value problem is
• Partner with product, risk, compliance, operations, and our partner and vendor counterparts to ship things that hold up in a regulated environment
• Improve reliability, observability, and developer experience as you go, and leave each system better than you found it

What we're looking for

• Strong systems thinking and problem solving. You can reason about an unfamiliar system, find where it breaks, and make a sound call with incomplete information
• Experience building and operating production backend services, with a track record of shipping projects end to end
• Solid fundamentals in distributed systems, APIs, databases, and infrastructure
• Proficiency in a modern backend language and ecosystem. We are primarily Java with Python for data work, and we do not expect you to have used ours
• Clear communication and genuine care about correctness. A bug here means someone's card declines at the grocery store or their credit report is wrong

Bonus Points

• Fintech, payments, lending, or card issuing experience: authorization, ledgers, settlement, reconciliation, disputes, or regulatory work
• Experience with workflow orchestration (Temporal, Step Functions) or event streaming
• You've built and maintained external, partner-facing APIs

This role isn't a fit if

• You want to own one narrow service and stay inside it
• You need fully specified requirements before you can start
• You want to work remotely

Why this role

Most backend work in fintech is maintaining a system someone else designed years ago. A large share of what we will be running in three years has not been built yet: new product verticals, more of the core financial infrastructure owned rather than rented, and a platform that has to serve many partners at once instead of one. You'll get real ownership early, see how a card program actually works end to end, and work with people who care about getting it right.

Compensation

This role is open at multiple levels. The range below spans mid-level through staff, and where an offer lands depends on the level we calibrate to during the process.

This role has an annual starting salary range of $160,000 - $295,000 + equity + benefits (see below). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.

Benefits

We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits:

Meaningful Start-up equity

100% health, vision & dental primary coverage

+ 75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage

Catered lunches

$250/month Commuter benefit

Parental leave

Team building events & happy hours

Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year

Apple equipment

401k plan

Location

We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square. This role is in-office 5 days a week.