{"id":2496608,"url":"https://alion.io/job/circle-distinguished-software-engineer","title":"Distinguished Software Engineer","company":{"id":12303,"name":"Circle","domain":"circle.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/circle","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Phenom","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":285000,"max":352500,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":352500},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-07T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-07","last_verified_at":"2026-10-15T04:20:57Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":38,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":38},"description":"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.\nWhat you’ll be part of:\nCircle 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.\nEngineering at Circle\nCircle 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.\nOur infrastructure-including USDC, a blockchain-based digital dollar-enables businesses, institutions, and developers to build on a pivotal evolution in money and technology.\nWhat You’ll Be Part Of\nCircle 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.\nCirclers 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.\nWhat You’ll Be Responsible For\nAs 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.\nWhat You’ll Work On\nDesign, evolve, and steward core platform architectures to ensure scalability, reliability, and long-term resilience.\n\nDrive architectural direction and technical strategy for critical distributed systems used across Circle’s product ecosystem.\n\nLead cross-team, cross-functional technical initiatives in partnership with Engineering, Product, Infrastructure, Security, and Compliance.\n\nProvide deep technical leadership and mentorship, elevating system design quality and engineering rigor across teams.\n\nIdentify and address platform-wide technical debt, architectural risks, and systemic bottlenecks.\n\nInfluence engineering-wide best practices in observability, reliability, performance, and developer experience.\n\nServe as a trusted technical advisor across the company, contributing to major technical decisions and long-term platform evolution.\n\nChampion innovation, knowledge sharing, and engineering excellence as a senior technical thought leader at Circle.\n\nWhat You’ll Bring to Circle\nCore Requirements\n15+ years of software engineering experience, including deep expertise designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.\n\nProven track record of architecting and scaling platform systems that support multiple downstream products and teams.\n\nAbility to set long-term technical direction while making pragmatic, high-impact execution decisions.\n\nExtensive experience operating critical, highly available systems with strong observability, reliability, and performance practices.\n\nExceptional system design skills, with the ability to debug and resolve complex issues across services and architectural boundaries.\n\nStrong cross-functional collaboration skills, with demonstrated influence on technical direction beyond immediate teams.\n\nPreferred Requirements\nExperience building internal developer platforms or shared services adopted broadly across an organization.\n\nFamiliarity working in regulated, compliance-heavy, or security-sensitive environments.\n\nTrack record of shaping engineering-wide practices, tools, or standards as a recognized technical leader.\n\nCircle 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.\nStarting 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.\nBase 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.\nShould you require accommodations or assistance in our interview process because of a disability, please reach out to  for support. 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