Staff Software Engineer

Job Description This position is part of our Settlement Team that owns the workflows that ensure funds move accurately and on time from payment events through settlement, reconciliation, adjustments, and reporting. We partner closely with Product, Reconciliation, Accounting, Finance, and Support to keep the platform trustworthy at scale. Our core stack is Ruby on Rails (money movement monolith) plus Go microservices on AWS/Kubernetes, with Datadog for observability, Looker for analytics, and Docker for local development. In this role, you’ll expand and strengthen PayNearMe’s settlement platform: designing systems that handle high-throughput money movement, making them easier to operate, and helping teams ship changes safely. Scope, design, build, and maintain APIs, services, and workflows that reliably process high-scale money movement and settlement. Own the architectural direction for the settlement domain in partnership with the CTO; produce and maintain architecture documentation (current state, target state, and migration plan) and drive alignment across teams. Review and approve architecture decision records (ADRs) and technical designs for settlement-related changes; ensure decisions meet standards for correctness, operability, security, and long-term maintainability. Drive end‑to‑end execution for large, ambiguous initiatives: reduce risk early, align stakeholders, and deliver in phases. Improve correctness and operational safety across settlement flows: deeply understand how money moves end‑to‑end (timing, state transitions, adjustments, exceptions), design for edge cases, and implement idempotency, reconciliation guarantees, safe backfills, incident readiness, and disciplined releases. Partner with Engineering Manager, Product, Performance, CTO, and other Staff peers to shape roadmaps and strategy for settlement—develop deep expertise in both the technical system and the business needs (what clients require from settlement, reporting, timing, and exception handling) and translate that into durable platform capabilities. Raise engineering standards across the team and broader org by partnering with other Staff engineers to define and drive consistent patterns for building and operating money‑movement systems (design reviews, abstractions, testing strategy, observability, and operational practices) across monolith + microservices. Drive adoption of AI‑assisted engineering practices (tooling, workflows, guardrails) to improve throughput and quality—especially for testing, incident response, code review, and documentation. Qualifications 10+ years building and operating backend systems, with Staff‑level scope (cross‑team influence, major initiatives, long‑term technical direction). Proven ability to own critical production workflows end‑to‑end (design, delivery, on‑call/ops, iterative hardening). Strong system design fundamentals: reliability, consistency, data modeling, and pragmatic API/service boundaries. Demonstrated ownership of architectural direction for a complex domain, including writing ADRs/tech specs and driving alignment across teams. Ability to move between high‑level architecture and hands‑on coding. Clear communication and strong judgment in high‑stakes, cross‑functional environments. Comfortable adopting AI‑assisted engineering workflows to improve velocity and quality while maintaining strong engineering and review standards. Ability to develop deep domain expertise and connect technical decisions to client/business outcomes (e.g., settlement requirements, reporting needs, and exception handling). Preferred Qualifications Payments/fintech experience (or other regulated/high‑integrity domains). Strong experience with Ruby on Rails in large systems and/or significant experience building Go services at scale. Experience with AWS + Kubernetes or similar service operations, and observability practices (Datadog/SLOs). Track record decomposing or evolving a monolith while keeping critical workflows stable. Experience serving as a reviewer/approver for major technical designs (ADRs, architecture reviews) in a high‑integrity domain. Experience building reconciliation/settlement, ledger‑adjacent systems, or financial reporting pipelines. Annual Salary Range $210,000 — $255,000 USD Benefits Competitive salary and benefits with growth‑company options grant Fast‑paced and professional work culture Stock options with standard startup vesting – 1 year cliff; 4 years total $50 monthly communication expense stipend to go towards your phone/internet bill $250 stipend to enhance your WFH setup Reimbursement for peripheral equipment: monitor (up to $400), keyboard and mouse (up to $200) Premium medical benefits including vision and dental (100% coverage for employees) Company‑sponsored life and disability insurance Paid parental bonding leave Paid sick leave, jury duty, bereavement 401k plan Flexible Time Off (our team members typically take off ~3‑4 weeks per year) Volunteer Time Off 13 scheduled holidays Equal Opportunity Employer PayNearMe is an equal opportunity employer. We are diligently and thoughtfully working towards cultivating a diverse workforce which in turn, enhances our products and services for the communities we serve. Applicants who represent all backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply. #J-18808-Ljbffr