Software Engineer - Backend
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 27, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 24, 2026. Cardless scores A on the Alion truth index.
About Cardless
Cardless is building the infrastructure for the world's best companies to design, build, and launch financial products of their own. Companies like Coinbase and Bilt use Cardless to create credit cards that feel entirely their own. In an industry where branded financial products usually mean shared logos and shared control, Cardless is built to disappear. Our APIs and components shape the journey from the first application to every purchase, reward, and moment of support that follows, while we handle lending, compliance, and operations behind the scenes.
In September 2025, we raised a $60 million Series C led by Spark Capital, bringing our total funding to $170 million. The team is over 70 people and scaling toward profitability by year-end 2026.
We're looking for kind, humble people with high standards and low egos. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. We see what could be improved, make it so, and leave every product, system, and team better than we found it.
About the role
As a Backend Engineer at Cardless, you'll work across the systems that run our partners' card programs: applications and underwriting, accounts and ledgers, transactions and payments, rewards, risk, and the APIs our partners build against.
We keep this role deliberately general. There is more work than there are people, and the engineers who do best here are the ones who move to wherever the problem is. There are three kinds of work on our roadmap, and most people touch all three:
Building things that don't exist yet, usually because a partner needs them to launch.
Scaling and hardening what we already run, so the platform holds up as we add partners and volume.
Laying groundwork for products we haven't launched, including bringing more of the core financial infrastructure in-house.
We care more about how you think than about what you've built before. Strong systems thinking and problem solving travel across domains. Direct experience in payments, lending, or financial infrastructure is a real advantage and we weight it heavily, but we would rather hire someone sharp who will learn this domain than someone who has only ever worked in it.
This role is open at multiple levels, from mid-level through staff. We calibrate level during the process rather than before it.
What you’ll do
Design and build backend systems that move real money, make credit decisions, and serve hundreds of thousands of cardholders
Take projects from ambiguity to production: scoping, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and the operational life that follows
Work across domains rather than inside a single service, going where the highest-value problem is
Partner with product, risk, compliance, operations, and our partner and vendor counterparts to ship things that hold up in a regulated environment
Improve reliability, observability, and developer experience as you go, and leave each system better than you found it
What we’re looking for
Strong systems thinking and problem solving. You can reason about an unfamiliar system, find where it breaks, and make a sound call with incomplete information
Experience building and operating production backend services, with a track record of shipping projects end to end
Solid fundamentals in distributed systems, APIs, databases, and infrastructure
Proficiency in a modern backend language and ecosystem. We are primarily Java with Python for data work, and we do not expect you to have used ours
Clear communication and genuine care about correctness. A bug here means someone's card declines at the grocery store or their credit report is wrong
Bonus Points
Fintech, payments, lending, or card issuing experience: authorization, ledgers, settlement, reconciliation, disputes, or regulatory work
Experience with workflow orchestration (Temporal, Step Functions) or event streaming
You've built and maintained external, partner-facing APIs
This role isn't a fit if
You want to own one narrow service and stay inside it
You need fully specified requirements before you can start
You want to work remotely
Why this role
Most backend work in fintech is maintaining a system someone else designed years ago. A large share of what we will be running in three years has not been built yet: new product verticals, more of the core financial infrastructure owned rather than rented, and a platform that has to serve many partners at once instead of one. You'll get real ownership early, see how a card program actually works end to end, and work with people who care about getting it right.
Compensation
This role is open at multiple levels. The range below spans mid-level through staff, and where an offer lands depends on the level we calibrate to during the process.
This role has an annual starting salary range of $160,000 - $295,000 + equity + benefits (see below). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.
Benefits
We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits:
Meaningful Start-up equity
100% health, vision & dental primary coverage
75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage
Catered lunches
$250/month Commuter benefit
Parental leave
Team building events & happy hours
Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year
Apple equipment
401k plan
Location
We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square. This role is in-office 5 days a week.