Forward Deployed Engineer

Cardless; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 295,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Startup equity

Health coverage

Dependent coverage

Catered lunches

Commuter benefit

Parental leave

Team events

PTO 15+ days

Apple equipment

401k plan

Job summary

Cardless is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to own end-to-end partner launches, from scoping to production, integrating our card services into client apps.

You will design APIs, write guides and sandbox tooling, and decide bespoke vs platform work to accelerate future launches.

Qualifications

• 6+ years building production backend systems with partner involvement.
• Deep understanding of end-to-end flows and debugging integrations.
• Ability to discuss technical tradeoffs with partners and business teams.
• Experience designing APIs and developer interfaces for integrations.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical relationship for new partner launches end to end, from scoping to production.
• Develop product sense for each partner’s app: where our surfaces belong in their flow.
• Write integration guides, API specs, and sandbox tooling for self-serve.
• Decide bespoke vs platform work and invest in the integration platform to speed launches.
• Travel to partners, run onsites and workshops, coordinating risk, compliance, and banks.

Skills

Backend systems

Partner integration

API design

OpenAPI / SDKs

Debug end-to-end flows

Tools

Sandbox tooling

Code generation

Job description

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 Forward Deployed Engineer at Cardless, you own getting a new partner from signed contract to live card program, and you do it with your hands in the code on both sides. Every launch starts similarly: a partner has a product in mind, an existing app, their own engineering team, and a set of constraints. You scope it with them, design the integration, write the guides they build against, and help them get to production. This involves coordinating the risk, compliance, processor, and bank work that has to land to launch a partner’s card end to end.

To do this effectively, you’ll need to carry a view on where our product belongs inside theirs. Our card lives in the partner’s app, in their onboarding funnel, next to their existing product. An application or offer surface placed in the wrong spot converts worse, confuses their customers, and results in a less successful card offering.

Every partner asks for something slightly different, and you decide which of those requests deserve a bespoke path and which are telling you our platform is missing something. Then you go build the missing thing. The goal is that the fifth integration takes a fraction of the time the first one did, because you spent the first four making it so.

What you’ll do

• Own the technical relationship for new partner launches end to end, from the first scoping workshop through the first approved application in production

• Develop real product sense for each partner’s app: where our application, offer, and card management surfaces belong in their flow

• Write the integration guides, API specs, and sandbox tooling partners build against, so they can self-serve

• Decide what we build bespoke for a partner versus what becomes a supported platform feature, and invest in the integration platform so each launch is faster than the last

• Travel to partners, run onsites and workshops, and pull risk, compliance, and our processor and bank partners through whatever is blocking a launch

What we’re looking for

• 6+ years building production backend systems, including work shipped with a partner or customer in the loop rather than behind a product manager

• You go genuinely deep on systems. You can hold an end-to-end flow in your head and debug someone else’s integration against it faster than they can

• Strong with partners: you can run a technical conversation with their engineers and explain the same tradeoff to their business team without changing the substance

• Product sense you’ll actually use. You can reason about where a card application, offer, or servicing surface belongs in a partner’s journey, and make the case for a different placement when the one they asked for will hurt their customers

• Sound judgment on bespoke versus platform, being able to say no and explain why certain requests doesn’t make sense

Bonus Points

• Fintech, payments, or card issuing experience, especially with processors, networks, or bank partners

• Prior forward deployed, solutions, or deployed engineering role at a platform company

• API design and developer experience: OpenAPI, SDKs and codegen, sandbox environments, versioning

• You’ve turned a one-off customer build into a real product feature and can describe how you decided

This role isn’t a fit if

• You want to stay in the codebase and out of partner conversations

• You need a stable roadmap. Launch dates move and partners elevate

• You can’t travel, or you want to work remotely

Why this role

This is one of the highest-leverage engineering roles at a platform company, because every partner launch is revenue and you are the person it runs through. You’ll see more of our system than almost anyone, work directly with the engineering teams at some of the best companies in the world, and have unusual influence over what we build next, since you’re the one who knows what our partners actually need.

Compensation

This role has an annual starting salary range of $190,000 - $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

• 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.