Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

San Francisco

About Highnote

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an embedded finance company that sets the standard in modern card platform management. As an all-in-one card issuer processor and program management platform, we provide digital-first organizations with the flexibility to seamlessly issue and process payment cards, embed virtual and physical card payments, and integrate ledger and wallet functionalities—empowering businesses to drive growth and profitability.

We've raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 140+ employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we've managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 25+ US states.

Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we're helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don't exist yet.

We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we're unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen.

What You'll Be Doing

• Building secure and compliant platform products that solve customer needs
• Writing high quality and robustly tested code, mostly in Java
• Understanding customer problems to build the right solutions
• Documenting your work to support our rapidly-scaling company
• Interfacing with a variety of the company's domains to strengthen our platform

What We Are Looking For

• 12+ years experience building production software systems
• A history of writing scalable, performant and maintainable code. We strongly believe languages can be learned and care more about your engineering skill over frameworks
• Excitement about shipping customer centric software
• Experience with Java >= 11, JPA ORM mapping, Crafting SQLs, unit and integration testing
• Proficiency using AI-powered development tools (e.g., Claude Code) across the full software development lifecycle - including design, prototyping, development, testing, and iteration. A demonstrated passion for AI-driven development, a commitment to continuously advancing AI skills, and a drive to push the boundaries of productivity and engineering outcomes.

Bonus Skills

• Experience contributing to Card Acquiring platforms
• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS
• SpringBoot, Docker, and Kubernetes
• Experience with big data technologies such as BigQuery and RedShift
• A background in the fin-tech space
• Experience building AI agents for financial or payment platforms
• Familiarity with AI agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, CrewAI, or AutoGen)

Why Highnote?

• We're a startup that allows for our employees to truly build from the ground up and impact every layer of our organization.
• We're a team of payments obsessed individuals. While some of us come from the fintech world, some of us don't. We value the varied backgrounds and the diverse perspectives of our employees.
• We're small on hierarchy and big on growth. We're a flat organization that allows everyone to have direct exposure to our leadership team. We are looking for builders who thrive in ambiguity.
• We're backed by Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures, Adams Street Partners, Westcap, and Pinegrove Venture Partners. Angel Investors include Bill Ready (CEO at Pinterest) and Renaud Laplanche (Co-Founder & CEO of Upgrade).

Highnote Benefits

• Flexible Paid Time Off
• 100% healthcare coverage + 75% coverage for dependents
• 401k program
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks paid leave for the birth parent, and up to 6 weeks paid leave for the non-birth parent
• Equity in Highnote
• Stipend to build out your home office; internet reimbursement
• At Highnote we have built a total rewards philosophy that includes fair, equitable, geo-based compensation that is performance and potential based. Our compensation packages are competitive based on robust market research and are a combination of a cash salary, equity, and benefits. In compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the annual salary range for applicants is $190,000-$240,000.

Please note that positions located in San Francisco are hybrid and include core working days of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in office. We provide flexible work options based on distance from our downtown SF office. Highnote believes in the power of face-to-face, personal connection. As a result, we prioritize in-person candidates.

Highnote is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people from all backgrounds and identities to apply. We do not discriminate based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by US federal state or local laws, or the laws of the country or jurisdiction where you work. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e.: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).