Distinguished Software Engineer (San Francisco)

Circle (NYSE: CRCL) is one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. Circle’s platform includes the world’s largest regulated stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the Economic OS for the internet. Enterprises, financial institutions, and developers use Circle to power trusted, internet-scale financial innovation. Learn more at circle.com.What you’ll be part of:Circle is committed to visibility and stability in everything we do. As we grow as an organization, we're expanding into some of the world's strongest jurisdictions. Speed and efficiency are motivators for our success and our employees live by our company values: High Integrity, Future Forward, Multistakeholder, Mindful, and Driven by Excellence. We have built a flexible work environment where new ideas are encouraged and everyone is a stakeholder.Engineering at CircleCircle is a financial technology company at the epicenter of the emerging internet of money—where value can move globally, nearly instantly, and more efficiently than legacy settlement systems. This new internet layer unlocks powerful opportunities across payments, commerce, and markets, helping raise global economic prosperity and advance financial inclusion.Our infrastructure—including USDC, a blockchain-based digital dollar—enables businesses, institutions, and developers to build on a pivotal evolution in money and technology.What You’ll Be Part OfCircle is committed to transparency, stability, and trust in everything we do. As we grow globally across some of the world’s strongest regulatory jurisdictions, speed, reliability, and execution excellence are critical to our success. Our culture is grounded in four core values—Multistakeholder, Mindfulness, Driven by Excellence, and High Integrity—which guide how we build, collaborate, and lead.Circlers operate in a distributed, remote-first environment that values flexibility, diverse perspectives, and shared ownership. New ideas are encouraged, and everyone is a stakeholder in Circle’s success.What You’ll Be Responsible ForAs a Distinguished Engineer at Circle, you will drive the long-term technical direction of Circle’s platform and core systems, shaping architectures that scale across products, teams, and regulatory environments. You will lead complex, cross-cutting engineering initiatives that span multiple organizations, influencing architectural decisions well beyond a single team. Acting as a trusted technical authority, you will set a high bar for system reliability, performance, security, and developer experience while mentoring senior engineers and contributing to Circle’s engineering standards, culture, and technical strategy.What You’ll Work OnDesign, evolve, and steward core platform architectures to ensure scalability, reliability, and long-term resilience.Drive architectural direction and technical strategy for critical distributed systems used across Circle’s product ecosystem.Lead cross-team, cross-functional technical initiatives in partnership with Engineering, Product, Infrastructure, Security, and Compliance.Provide deep technical leadership and mentorship, elevating system design quality and engineering rigor across teams.Identify and address platform-wide technical debt, architectural risks, and systemic bottlenecks.Influence engineering-wide best practices in observability, reliability, performance, and developer experience.Serve as a trusted technical advisor across the company, contributing to major technical decisions and long-term platform evolution.Champion innovation, knowledge sharing, and engineering excellence as a senior technical thought leader at Circle.What You’ll Bring to CircleCore Requirements15+ years of software engineering experience, including deep expertise designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.Proven track record of architecting and scaling platform systems that support multiple downstream products and teams.Ability to set long-term technical direction while making pragmatic, high-impact execution decisions.Extensive experience operating critical, highly available systems with strong observability, reliability, and performance practices.Exceptional system design skills, with the ability to debug and resolve complex issues across services and architectural boundaries.Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with demonstrated influence on technical direction beyond immediate teams.Preferred RequirementsExperience building internal developer platforms or shared services adopted broadly across an organization.Familiarity working in regulated, compliance-heavy, or security-sensitive environments.Track record of shaping engineering-wide practices, tools, or standards as a recognized technical leader.Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We consider a wide variety of elements when crafting our compensation ranges and total compensation packages.Starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Please note that compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.Base Pay Range: $285,000 - $352,500We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status required by the laws in the locations where we hire. Additionally, Circle participates in the E-Verify Program in certain locations, as required by law.Should you require accommodations or assistance in our interview process because of a disability, please reach out to View email address on apply.placed-app.com for support. We respect your privacy and will connect with you separately from our interview process to accommodate your needs.#LI-RemoteJob SummaryJob number: JR100849Date posted : 2026-04-06Profession: EngineeringEmployment type: Full time