Money Systems Architect: Ledger & Payments

Plug; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 222,000 - 259,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

401(k) plan

Work from anywhere

Lunch stipend

Equity

Unlimited PTO

Kitchens and snacks

Dog-friendly office

Growth opportunities

Job summary

Plug, an automotive fintech startup, seeks a Principal Software Engineer to design money-facing systems including ledger, disbursement, and settlement. You will ensure auditability and regulatory alignment while partnering with banking partners and risk/compliance teams.

You will lead architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and steer the approach to build vs. integrate with external providers in a fast-paced, on-site environment in LA/SF. Relocation not required for SF candidates.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ years in B2B/B2C payments solutions.
• Direct experience designing and building payments, ledger, lending, or money movement infrastructure.
• Taste for elegance under regulatory and stakeholder constraints to avoid debt.
• Experience designing systems under banking-partner constraints for regulator sign-off.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems: transaction integrity, data consistency, idempotency, fault tolerance.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture for money-facing systems: ledger, disbursement, settlement, reconciliation, lien/title payoff processing.
• Design a deterministic, auditable ledger with a single source of truth for every dollar.
• Architect systems that integrate with banking partners and payment processors within regulatory constraints.
• Document core technical tradeoffs: consistency vs. availability, idempotency, fault-tolerance, recovery.
• Collaborate with Product, Risk, Finance, and Compliance to translate requirements into design.
• Set technical standards and guardrails for money-touching systems.
• Mentor engineers around money systems and raise the technical bar.
• Evaluate build vs. buy with external payments/banking providers.

Skills

Software engineering

Payments systems

Distributed systems

Architecture decisions

Regulatory compliance

Cross-functional collaboration

AI/code review guidance

Job description

Plug, an automotive fintech startup, seeks a Principal Software Engineer to design money-facing systems including ledger, disbursement, and settlement. You will ensure auditability and regulatory alignment while partnering with banking partners and risk/compliance teams.

You will lead architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and steer the approach to build vs. integrate with external providers in a fast-paced, on-site environment in LA/SF. Relocation not required for SF candidates.