Senior Software Engineer, Trust & Safety

Senior Software Engineer

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help build and evolve the systems that keep Givebutter safe — fraud detection, risk decisioning, abuse prevention, and the internal tooling our operations team needs to investigate and act at scale. This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You'll write code, design systems, debug production issues, and release new features.

You'll work day-to-day on our Payments and Trust & Safety team and collaborate closely with our engineering, operations, product team to solve ambiguous risk challenges into concrete solution.

This role spans the full breadth of how we fight fraud, from building decision systems and investigation tools to hardening our payment infrastructure and working with operations on process. It's as much about understanding the business as it is about writing great code.

Why join the Givebutter Engineering team?

• Democracy of code – We value equal contributions from all engineers and foster an environment of open discussion on architecture and ideas.

• Autonomy in work – We keep meetings to a minimum. Engineers have the freedom to manage their own calendars and block out uninterrupted time for focused work.

• Automated CI/CD – Our build and deployment processes are fully automated and hands-off, allowing engineers to focus on problem-solving through code.

• Mission-driven, full stop – You'll be working with inspiring nonprofits, charities, and organizations that are making a positive impact around the world.

What you'll do

• Build the fraud platform . Design and implement fraud detection and risk decisioning systems, rule engines, scoring pipelines, and event-driven risk signals.

• Build for operators . Create investigation and review tooling that helps our Trust & Safety operations team triage, investigate, and resolve cases efficiently. You care as much about internal UX as external.

• Help shape what we build next . You'll work closely with your manager, product, and operations stakeholders to identify where we're exposed, propose solutions, and help prioritize the roadmap. Your domain expertise matters here — we want your perspective on what we should be doing.

• Think like an adversary . Develop a deep understanding of fraud vectors in the fundraising and payments space: stolen cards, synthetic identities, friendly fraud, campaign abuse, and help us build systems that adapt as threats evolve.

• Strengthen payment integrity . Work across our payment systems to harden the transaction lifecycle against abuse. You don't need to be a payments expert on day one.

• Mentor those around you . Help everyone on your team develop Trust & Safety domain expertise. Share what you already know, what you've learned, and help unblock teammates through thoughtful code reviews.

Requirements

• 6+ years of software engineering experience , with experience in fraud, trust & safety, risk, abuse prevention, or adjacent domains.

• Experience building fraud detection or risk decisioning systems — rule engines, scoring systems, policy frameworks, or investigation platforms.

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals . You can design scalable, event-driven systems and reason about distributed architecture tradeoffs. You've debugged production issues across multiple layers of the stack.

• Stakeholder partnership . You partner closely with end-users and cross-functional stakeholders to discover problems, validate solutions, and iterate based on feedback. You communicate clearly, ask good questions, and help turn ambiguous needs into shippable work.

• Good judgment and prioritization . You can take a vague problem like "our dispute rate is climbing" and work with your team to break it down into a concrete plan with clear next steps.

Nice to have

• Experience with PHP/Laravel , or a similar MVC framework like Ruby on Rails, Django, etc. Laravel experience is a plus, but strong fundamentals in any comparable framework translate well.

• Experience leading a project or feature area end-to-end

• Experience with React/TypeScript on the frontend.

• Familiarity with Stripe's APIs , payments, disputes, Radar, or similar payment processor integrations.

• Experience building tools for operations or support teams (internal tooling, case management, review queues).

• Background in fundraising, nonprofit tech, or marketplace platforms where T&S challenges involve campaign legitimacy, donor protection, or platform abuse.

• Exposure to event-driven architectures (CDC, Kafka, event sourcing) for real-time risk signal processing.

• Experience working in AWS (EKS/Kubernetes, RDS, etc.).

More about Givebutter

Benefits

• Remote Work: Work remotely from one of our 10 hubs (Austin, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Nashville).

• Health Insurance: We offer Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance covered 100% for employees as well as HSA and FSA accounts.

• Dependent Care Coverage: We offer coverage for dependents, with 50% of Medical, Dental, and Vision premiums covered for all eligible dependents.

• Mental Health: Givebutter health insurance plans come with access to a TalkSpace membership.

• 401k: We offer a 3% 401k match for all eligible employee's.

• Vacation and Holidays: Givebutter offers a Flexible PTO policy with uncapped vacation days and company-recognized holidays.

• Wellness Week: Givebutter closes for one week each summer to prioritize rest and recharge for the entire team.

• Parental Leave: We offer 12 weeks of paid leave for all parents and comprehensive leave planning management through Aidora.

• Family Care Support: Access a company-paid UrbanSitter membership plus care credits to book trusted, background-checked caregivers for childcare, senior care, pet care, and household support when you need it most.

• Home Office Stipend: Upgrade your home office with company-sponsored expenses, including high-quality laptops, monitors, and modern technology.

• Coworking Stipend: Enjoy a monthly stipend that gives you the freedom to work from coworking spaces or cafés whenever you need connection, community, or a change of scenery.

• Charitable Giving: Employees are encouraged to donate up to $50/month to any verified nonprofit they wish to support on Givebutter.

• Professional Development: We offer learning and development reimbursement opportunities.

• Love What You Do: We are a mission-driven company serving the charitable sector. Feel good about the work you're doing and the company you work for.

Interview Process

Below is a high-level outline of our standard interview process

1. Recruiter Screen: A 30-minute conversation to learn more about your background, walk through the role, and ensure mutual alignment on expectations, values, and logistics.

2. Hiring Manager Interview: A deeper dive into your relevant