Software Engineer - Backend

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Employment Type: FullTime

Cardless is looking for an experienced backend engineer to join our exceptional team! You’ll play a key role in designing, building, and scaling the systems that power our co-branded credit card platform spanning domains like applications, accounts, transactions, fraud, risk, and rewards.

As a software engineer, your responsibilities will include but not be limited to the following:

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable, secure, and high-performance backend systems and services that support Cardless’s core financial products

• Contribute to architectural discussions and decisions to evolve our platform as we grow

• Take ownership of projects from design through production — including requirements gathering, implementation, testing, deployment, and ongoing maintenance

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, other engineers, and stakeholders (external partners, risk, compliance) to deliver high-quality features quickly and reliably

• Identify and drive improvements in system reliability, observability, performance, and developer experience

• Provide technical guidance and thought partnership to peers across the engineering organization

What we look for

• Strong experience designing and implementing backend systems and services that operate at scale (typically 5+ years of industry experience)

• Solid understanding of distributed systems, APIs, databases, and infrastructure fundamentals

• Proficiency with a modern backend language (e.g. Java, Python) and ecosystem

• Track record of delivering complex technical projects end-to-end, collaborating effectively with cross-functional partners

• Deep, low-level expertise in one or more backend domains (e.g., databases, scaling systems, distributed systems)

• Passion for building robust, maintainable systems that have real-world impact for customers

Nice to have

• Experience building and maintaining external, public-facing APIs

• Familiarity with financial systems, reconciliation workflows, or data integrity challenges

• Exposure to ML pipelines or feature stores

Why Cardless

You’ll join a collaborative, fast-moving team that values craftsmanship, curiosity, and impact. We’re building products that enable leading brands to offer credit in new ways — and we’re just getting started.

Note: This role is open to experienced (senior/staff+) engineers only

This role has an annual starting salary range of $165,000-$260,000 + equity + benefits (see above). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.

Benefits

We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in the Mission District. 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 the Mission District (near Dolores Park). We welcome employees who want to work from this office; we offer additional benefits to those who do, and relocation assistance to those who'd like to.

We regularly bring our team together for offsites & trips, about every 2 months, both for fun and for work. We cover all travel & lodging in these cases.