Cardless

Software Engineer - Backend

San Francisco$165k–$260kfulltimemidAdded today

About this role

Cardless seeks an experienced backend engineer to design and scale financial systems powering their co-branded credit card platform. You'll own projects across applications, accounts, transactions, fraud, and rewards while collaborating with cross-functional teams in a fast-moving fintech environment.

What you'll do

Design and build scalable, secure backend systems for financial products across multiple domains
Lead projects end-to-end from requirements through production deployment and maintenance
Contribute to architectural decisions and platform evolution as the company grows
Collaborate with product, design, compliance, and external partners on feature delivery
Drive improvements in system reliability, observability, performance, and developer experience
Mentor peers and provide technical guidance across the engineering organization

What they're looking for

Backend systems design and implementation at scale (5+ years experience)
Distributed systems, APIs, databases, and infrastructure fundamentals
Proficiency in Java, Python, or similar modern backend languages
Deep expertise in databases, scaling systems, or distributed systems
End-to-end project delivery and cross-functional collaboration
Public-facing API design and maintenance
Financial systems or data integrity knowledge (nice to have)
ML pipelines or feature store exposure (nice to have)

Benefits

Competitive salary ($165K–$260K) with startup equity
100% health, vision, and dental primary coverage; 75% dependent coverage
Catered lunches, $250/month commuter benefit, and Apple equipment
Parental leave and flexible PTO with minimum 15 days annually
401k plan and team building events
5-day in-office in San Francisco's Jackson Square

Likely interview questions

Tell us about a complex backend system you designed at scale—what challenges did you face and how did you solve them?
Describe your experience with distributed systems. How do you approach ensuring data consistency and reliability?

Have you worked on financial or payments systems before? What unique challenges did they present?
Walk us through how you've managed a full-cycle project from requirements gathering through production—what went well and what would you do differently?
How do you approach improving system observability and reliability in a growing platform?
Tell us about a time you collaborated with non-engineering stakeholders (product, compliance, risk). How did you navigate competing priorities?
What's your experience with public-facing APIs? How do you think about backward compatibility and versioning?

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