Staff Engineer

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

The Product Engineering teams at Betterment build the applications our customers use when they are logged in to their Betterment accounts. We are looking for Staff Full Stack Engineers to join us in furthering our mission to make people’s lives better by providing delightful experiences that have been Betterment’s hallmark since inception.

As a staff engineer, you'll play an instrumental role in designing and implementing complex systems within the team's domain, guiding your team's full stack development practices and collaborating with other senior engineering leaders to advance Betterment's technology and create high performance, reliability and exceptional developer experience.

If you're passionate about delightful customer experiences, building scalable, high-performance web applications and are eager to work in a collaborative, forward-thinking environment, we'd love to have you on our team.

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: $200,000 - $238,000

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

A Day in the Life: 

• Shape the technical direction for large projects helping define the systems, patterns, and engineering practices behind customer-facing experiences.
• Establish and evolve the team's practices for AI-assisted development, including how AI-generated code is reviewed, tested, and held to the same quality bar as anything else we ship.
• Partner with engineers, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to turn product goals into pragmatic technical plans and phased delivery.
• Design and build high-quality software across the stack, with a high bar for performance, reliability, observability, and maintainability.
• Guide complex projects from discovery through release, aligning teammates, clarifying tradeoffs, and helping the team make sound technical decisions.
• Create leverage for the team by reducing technical friction, improving developer workflows, and making thoughtful investments in architecture and code health.
• Mentor engineers across levels through feedback, pairing, design reviews, and day-to-day technical leadership.
• Collaborate with other senior/Staff engineers to evaluate new patterns and technologies, and adopt them thoughtfully when they improve the customer or developer experience.
• Raise the bar for how we work by sharing knowledge, strengthening engineering practices, and contributing to an inclusive, high-trust engineering culture.

What We’re Looking For

• Proven experience scoping, leading, and delivering complex technical projects from discovery through release.
• Hands-on experience using AI coding tools in production work, with the judgment to know when to lean on them, when to verify closely, and when to write it yourself.
• Strong full stack engineering experience, including building customer-facing web applications and the systems that support them.
• Strong experience in at least one server-side language. We use Ruby on Rails, so experience with Ruby is a plus, but strong fundamentals in languages such as Java, Python, or C# are valuable.
• Proficiency building frontend applications using React or a similar framework. Experience with GraphQL is a plus.
• Proficiency with relational databases, including schema design and writing detailed SQL queries.
• Strong technical judgment, including the ability to evaluate tradeoffs and make pragmatic decisions without compromising quality.
• Experience building consensus, influencing technical direction, and collaborating effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• A track record of mentoring engineers through feedback, pairing, design reviews, and day-to-day technical leadership.
• A high bar for software quality, including testing, observability, reliability, and maintainability.

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.