Senior Staff Software Engineer

ABOUT EARNIN

As one of the first pioneers of earned wage access, our passion at EarnIn is building products that deliver real-time financial flexibility for people living paycheck to paycheck. Our community members access their earnings as they earn them, with options to spend, save, and grow their money without mandatory fees, interest rates, or credit checks. We’re fortunate to have an incredibly experienced leadership team, combined with world-class funding partners like A16Z, Matrix Partners, DST, Ribbit Capital, and a very healthy core business with a tremendous runway. We’re growing fast and excited to bring on world-class talent to help shape the next chapter of our growth journey.

EarnIn is an AI-first company, and we encourage you to use AI tools throughout much of your interview process. If you use AI during the live interview, just say so; a quick, natural mention of how it helped and why you are using it is all we need. What we're evaluating is your judgment, reasoning, and ability to own and defend your work, not whether AI was involved. Some rounds, particularly those focused on your career history and past experiences, will not allow the use of AI, and we'll let you know of those in advance. When in doubt, ask your recruiter or interviewer directly.

POSITION SUMMARY
We’re looking for an exceptional Senior Staff Software Engineer to serve as the L0 Architect for Live Pay, the product that powers the EarnIn Card. As the team’s lead architect, you’ll own the technical vision and architectural integrity of the systems behind the card. These include integration with the core card platform, issuing bank partners, and Visa. They also include real-time transaction authorization, ledgering, card funding and balance management, settlement and reconciliation, and credit reporting. You’ll also own the backend architecture that supports the in-app card experience, including onboarding, post-onboarding, and card management.

You’ll operate at both deep technical and organizational scale. You’ll set the multi-year architecture, be the final technical escalation point for the team’s design decisions, and solve ambiguous, high-impact problems. You’ll work side by side with other Senior Staff and Principal Engineers and partner with the Business Unit lead to shape product and technical strategy. You’ll also help define how AI and agentic engineering workflows can safely amplify engineering productivity, with appropriate guardrails for security, correctness, and operational reliability.

The Canada base salary range for this full-time position is $279,000-$341,000 + equity + benefits. We determine salary ranges by role, level, and location. This hybrid position requires in-person work from our Vancouver, Canada office 2 days a week.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own Architecture & Technical Strategy: As the team’s L0 Architect, define and own the technical vision, system architecture, and multi-year roadmap for Live Pay and the EarnIn Card, spanning card authorization and processing, ledgering, card funding, settlement, credit reporting, and the member-facing card experience.
• Shape Strategy with Business & Technical Leadership: Partner closely with the Business Unit lead and fellow Senior Staff and Principal Engineers to translate business goals into technical strategy, align on priorities and trade-offs, and keep architecture consistent across related domains.
• Be the Architectural Authority: Serve as the team's final technical decision-maker for architecture. Lead architecture and design reviews, own technical RFCs, and keep systems coherent, scalable, and aligned with business and regulatory needs.
• Architect Core Card, Bank & Network Integrations: Lead the design and evolution of integrations with the core card platform, issuing bank partners, and Visa. This covers authorization and clearing flows, network requirements, certification, dispute and exception handling, and partner API and file-based interfaces. You’ll own how we evaluate, onboard, and operate these dependencies reliably.
• Architect Credit Reporting: Design and own the systems that report card account data accurately and on schedule to credit bureaus. This includes data pipelines, accuracy and audit controls, dispute and correction handling, and compliance with applicable regulations.
• Architect the Card Experience Backend: Own the backend architecture and APIs that power the card experience in the app, including onboarding, post-onboarding, and card management (e.g., activation, lock/unlock, card details, limits, replacement, and transaction history). Partner closely with Product, Design, and client engineering to deliver fast, reliable, secure experiences.
• Lead High-Impact Technical Initiatives: Drive complex, ambiguous initiatives that span multiple services and teams, from problem definition and architecture through implementation, rollout, and long-term operation.
• Build Resilient Card Payment Systems: Design highly available, low-latency distributed systems and APIs using microservices, event-driven architectures, and technologies such as Kotlin, Kafka, DynamoDB, MySQL, and Kubernetes. Emphasize correctness, idempotency, consistency, and auditability for every transaction.
• Evolve Card Product Capabilities: Architect solutions for real-time authorization decisioning, balance and ledger integrity, card funding and balance updates, and reconciliation across processor, bank, and network records.
• Align Cross-Team Architecture: Work with the platform, payments, risk, and product teams Live Pay relies on to establish shared patterns, clear service boundaries, and well-defined interfaces, so the card experience ships quickly without compromising reliability or compliance.
• Drive Operational Excellence: Set the bar for reliability, observability, SLOs, incident response, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and production readiness for the systems that power the card. Act as a senior technical escalation point during major incidents, including partner and network outages.
• Advance AI-Powered Engineering: Lead the responsible adoption of agentic workflows and multi-agent systems to automate engineering, testing, debugging, operations, and analysis, with appropriate evaluation, security, and human-in-the-loop guardrails.
• Multiply Engineering Talent: Mentor Staff and Senior engineers, influence technical direction across the organization, and raise the bar through architecture reviews, design reviews, and hands-on technical leadership.
• Partner Across the Company: Work closely with Product, Design, Data Science, Risk, Security, Compliance, Finance, Infrastructure, and executive stakeholders to translate customer, business, and regulatory needs into durable technical strategies.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with demonstrated progression into Staff/Senior Staff-level technical leadership and architectural ownership.
• Proven track record serving as the lead architect or technical authority for a product or team, defining and executing technical strategy for large-scale distributed systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead architecture and delivery across multiple engineering teams and organizational boundaries, and to collaborate as a peer with other Senior Staff and Principal Engineers and with business leaders, without relying on direct authority.
• Deep hands-on experience designing and operating highly available, low-latency backend systems at scale, ideally in payments, banking, or card domains.
• Experience architecting card and payments domains, such as card issuing, processing, and authorization; integrations with card processors, issuing banks, or card networks (e.g., Visa); ledgering and balance management; settlement and reconciliation; or payment partner integrations.
• Working knowledge of card network requirements, including authorization and clearing flows, ISO 8583 or equivalent message formats, certification, chargebacks and disputes, and related compliance expectations (e.g., PCI DSS).
• Experience with credit reporting or consumer data furnishing (e.g., credit bureau reporting formats such as Metro 2, data accuracy controls, dispute handling) is a strong plus.
• Experience designing backend services and APIs that power consumer-facing mobile and web experiences, such as onboarding and account or card management flows, in close partnership with product, design, and client engineers.
• Strong understanding of transactional correctness in distributed systems, including idempotency, eventual consistency, exactly-once semantics, and data integrity and auditability.
• Strong proficiency in Kotlin or another modern JVM language (Java, Scala), with the ability to work effectively across language boundaries.
• Deep experience with REST APIs, SQL/NoSQL data stores (DynamoDB, MySQL), Kafka or equivalent streaming platforms, Kubernetes, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
• Strong operational instincts, including experience with SLOs, observability, incident response, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and production reliability for critical systems that depend on external partners.
• Hands-on experience building AI-assisted or agentic engineering workflows, including orchestration, tool use, evaluation, security boundaries, and guardrails.
• Exceptional architectural judgment and the ability to simplify complex systems while balancing reliability, security, scalability, developer experience, regulatory requirements, and execution speed.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior technical talent and create leverage across an engineering organization.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) as part of your software development workflow.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex technical strategies to engineering, product, risk, and executive audiences.
• Experience in FinTech, payments, banking, or other regulated, compliance-sensitive environments is strongly preferred.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Success in this role is measured by the architectural integrity and reliability of the systems that power the EarnIn Card, not simply by the services you personally build. As the team’s L0 Architect, you’ll establish a clear, durable architecture for how every card transaction is authorized, recorded, settled, reconciled, and reported across our core card, bank, Visa, and credit bureau integrations. You’ll also make sure the card experience in the app, from onboarding through day-to-day card management, is fast, secure, and dependable. Members should be able to count on the card working every time they use it.

You’ll anticipate scale, reliability, and regulatory challenges before they become product constraints. You’ll simplify complex systems, align the teams Live Pay depends on, and help the Business Unit lead turn strategy into a credible technical roadmap. You’ll operate comfortably from deep technical implementation to company-level strategy: diving into code and production systems when necessary, working shoulder to shoulder with Senior Staff and Principal peers, mentoring senior technical leaders, and setting technical direction for one of EarnIn’s most critical products.

At EarnIn, we believe that the best way to build a financial system that works for everyday people is by hiring a team that represents our diverse community. Our team is diverse not only in background and experience but also in perspective. We celebrate our diversity and strive to create a culture of belonging. EarnIn does not unlawfully discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, legally protected medical condition, family care status, military or veteran status, marital status, registered domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal laws. EarnIn is an E-Verify participant.

EarnIn does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third-party recruiting agencies in response to job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers or HR team.