Staff Engineer, Backend

About Betterment:

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing, savings and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission, to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease.  We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (four days/ week in-office, with no required office days during the summer and winter holidays).

About the role

Broker Dealer is the core of the Betterment platform. On a busy day, we securely move millions of dollars through the Betterment system and ensure each transaction flows through a complex series of risk checks for strict regulatory compliance. Every ounce of efficiency and intelligence we pour into this system translates into more value for our customers. We’re looking for engineers to help us answer some of our most difficult backend scaling, software design, and optimization questions. As a Staff Engineer in our Broker Dealer organization, you'll help define our technical vision, improve system stability, drive on-time delivery, mentor our team of amazing engineers, and help scale our systems in the next chapter of our growth.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. 

New York City: $210,000-245,000

This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus.

A day in the life

• Drive the technical vision and long-term strategy of the team
• Build innovative trading and money-movement technology that empowers people to make the most of their money, so they can live better
• Solve “impossible” problems. Take your ideas to the next level right away. We experiment, iterate, learn, and repeat
• Collaborate with purpose. Spread knowledge across the organization, leveling up engineering practices and mentoring other engineers
• Gain trust through transparency. We believe in taking the guesswork out of investing. That means a consistent experience for our customers - you’ll build the tools to make it possible
• Create efficiency. Our software helps customers save time and money. We maintain it through clean code, pragmatic programming, and lean engineering
• Work with people who care. Half of our team is made up of engineers but we believe everyone at Betterment is an engineer with their own tools. We’re a group of talented professionals who pride ourselves on what we do. We’re smart, innovative, energetic, and lots of fun

What we’re looking for

• 10+ years professional experience in at least one object-oriented language, strong plus for Java experience
• 7+ years professional experience with SQL and relational databases, including designing schemas and writing detailed SQL queries
• A strong command of fundamental algorithms and data structures
• Experience scaling and optimizing in large-scale distributed systems
• Experience designing, building, scaling, and maintaining core backend software components
• Proven ability to lead and manage projects that span one or more teams, considering tradeoffs to ensuring on-time delivery while maintaining high standards of quality, performance and security
• An understanding of how to make the tradeoffs required to ship without compromising quality
• Knowing that investments in developing solid tests pays for itself several times over
• Appreciation for agility and pragmatism in software development

Join a team built on these core values

We change lives

Be a part of a community of innovators working to transform financial outcomes for real people. Your work will make an impact, always laddering up to our mission; to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease.

We set audacious goals

We set them for the company, our customers, and ourselves, and we won’t stop until we reach them. We don’t just show up; we give our all, then celebrate our wins.

We value all perspectives

When we collaborate, we're at our best. We believe diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes and strive to uphold our supportive and inclusive community.

We simplify financial services

We’re financial services pioneers, always finding new ways to improve, optimize, and enhance. Constant improvement is in our DNA.

 Our Commitment to Your Total Well-being:

• We offer a competitive suite of benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage; life and AD&D insurance; short- and long-term disability; infertility support and WPATH-aligned transgender health benefits; an Employee Assistance Program (EAP); transit benefits and FSA and HSA options
• Ownership: Equity for all employees, including new hire and refresher grants.
• Time: Flexible paid time off, paid parental leave, and a fully paid four-week sabbatical in your sixth year.
• Growth: Company-paid professional coaching for all employees.
• Wealth: Day-one 401(k) match plus matching on qualified student loan payments.

What happens next

We’ll take a few weeks to review all applications. If we’d like to spend more time with you, we’ll reach out to arrange next steps, which will include 3-4 sets of meetings with your future colleagues.

In the interview process, we’ll look to learn more about your skills, experiences, capabilities, and motivators. Many of our questions will be aimed at understanding how you might operate here at Betterment. Depending on the role, we may ask you to complete a case study exercise or technical assessments, as we want to collect a robust set of data points to better inform our decisions.

On average, it takes us around 3-5 weeks to make a hiring decision, depending on your availability and sense of urgency. As a best practice, we aim to interview at least 2-3 final round candidates before making a hiring decision. Please note that, as we usually receive an overwhelming number of  applications for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the interview process. 

We recognize that interviewing for a new role is a big deal. We appreciate you considering Betterment as the next step in your career, and our Recruiting Team is here to support and advocate for you through the interview process!

Betterment is dedicated to providing accommodations to candidates upon request. If you need accommodations at any point throughout the interview process, please reach out to your recruiter. 

Please note that in any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Come join us! 

We’re an equal opportunity employer and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. We strictly prohibit and do not tolerate discrimination against employees, applicants, or any other covered persons because of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex, gender (including gender nonconformity and status as a transgender or transsexual individual), sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, past, current or prospective service in the uniformed services, predisposing genetic characteristic, domestic violence victim status, arrest records, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state or local law.