Senior IT Systems Engineer

M1 Finance; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Health, dental, vision, disability, &

Retirement with employer match

Unlimited PTO

Open communication with leadership

Job summary

M1 Finance is seeking a senior IT systems engineer to operate, secure, and continuously improve our IT environment in Chicago. You will own identity and access systems, endpoint management, and the SaaS stack, while partnering with Compliance, Engineering, and the broader team.

You’ll bring hands-on engineering discipline, automation focus, and the ability to manage complex, regulated IT infrastructure with strong documentation and auditable processes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in IT systems engineering or administration with independent ownership of major environment parts.
• Deep experience end-to-end in a system you owned and improved, with clear impact.
• Scripting and automation (PowerShell, Bash, Python, or similar), REST APIs, and config-as-code with discipline.
• Depth in Okta, SSO, MFA, identity lifecycle; macOS and Jamf; Microsoft 365; SaaS administration and integration.
• Hands-on design and operation of hardened office environments: networking, on-prem infra, badge/camera, AV.
• Experience in regulated, security-conscious, or highly available environments; financial services helpful.

Responsibilities

• Lead identity and access engineering in Okta, designing SSO, MFA, provisioning and deprovisioning, groups, and access policies.
• Continuously reduce toil across the environment by automating provisioning, configuration, and reporting.
• Own the security of the IT environment, including vulnerability/patch management and endpoint hardening.
• Own the engineering behind workforce enablement: SaaS platforms, endpoints, and onboarding/offboarding automation.
• Maintain control environment: access reviews, configuration standards, asset inventory, logging, and audit-ready evidence.
• Serve as escalation path for employee IT support and Chicago office: fix root causes and maintain network, AV, and security systems.

Skills

PowerShell

Bash

Python

REST APIs

Config-as-code

Source control

Documentation

Testing

Tools

Okta

SSO

MFA

macOS

Jamf

Microsoft 365

SaaS administration

Networking

Endpoint security

Patching

Virtualization/VDI

Job description

• Compensation: USD 100000 - USD 130000 - yearly

Company Description

M1 Finance has created a personal wealth-building platform made for the modern era, uniting personal perspective and automated ease. We seamlessly combine free investing and low cost borrowing all in one intuitive, automated Finance Super App, and we’re driven by a mission to empower personal financial well-being. We believe that financial well-being is fundamental to overall well-being, and we strive to deliver products that are simpler, smarter, and stronger than those created by our boring, entrenched, and slow-moving competitors in the personal finance industry.

Our clients have already trusted us with over $12 billion of assets, we’re currently helping hundreds of thousands of people grow and manage their wealth with our industry-leading automation and tools, and we’re adding thousands of new clients every day.

We’re looking for passionate people who want to improve and build on what we’ve created and take responsibility to help others build something meaningful and sustainable for their futures.

We mean it when we say, “M1 is yours to build.”

If this sounds interesting to you, read on!

Job Description

M1 is hiring a senior IT systems engineer to operate, secure, and continuously improve the IT environment our employees depend on every day, including but not limited to identity and access systems, endpoint management, office infrastructure in Chicago, and the org's SaaS productivity stack. M1 is a fintech firm operating in a heavily regulated industry as a self-clearing broker-dealer, so this environment operates under continuous regulatory security and audit obligations. You'll join M1's IT and Security team, own the engineering and security behind this environment, and partner across Compliance, Engineering, and the wider business.

We're looking for people energized by solving real problems and having impact, not just by working with interesting technology. You bring real engineering discipline to your work: version control, testing, documentation, and following through until the work is fully done. You automate the toil worth automating rather than than brute-force the same problem twice. You reach for the right tool for the job, and are comfortable dabbling across the stack: in scripts, APIs, and config-as-code. You embrace and use AI judiciously to learn and to move quickly, and exercise good judgment on outputs.

What You'll Do

• Lead identity and access engineering in Okta, our primary IdP: designing SSO, MFA, provisioning and deprovisioning, groups, and access policies around least privilege and separation of duties.
• Continuously reduce toil across the environment: automating repetitive provisioning, configuration, and reporting, integrating tools so the same work is never done twice by hand, and maintaining the documentation and runbooks that spread knowledge across the team and cut down common support requests.
• Own the security of the IT environment, including but not limited to vulnerability and patch management, endpoint hardening, and a hands‑on role in detecting and responding to issues.
• Own the engineering behind workforce enablement: configure and run the SaaS platforms employees depend on and the vendor relationships behind them, manage endpoints (macOS and Windows), and automate onboarding and offboarding so the employee experience scales without adding headcount.
• Keep the control environment healthy and provable: run access reviews, maintain configuration standards, asset inventory, and logging, produce the evidence internal and external auditors rely on, and be ready to show how a control actually works.
• Serve as escalation path for employee IT support and the Chicago office: fix root causes instead of reworking tickets, and keep the office network, meeting room AV, and physical security (badge access, cameras) running and support in person company events.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in IT systems engineering or administration, with a track record of owning and improving major parts of an environment independently.
• Evidence you can go deep: a system you owned end to end and made materially better, and how you found it, what you changed, and how you knew it worked. Going deep somewhere matters more to us than matching every line below.
• Comfortable with scripting and automation (PowerShell, Bash, Python, or similar), REST APIs, and config-as-code, applied with an engineer's discipline — source control, meaningful tests, documentation others can follow, and repeatable, auditable processes.
• Depth in several of: Okta, SSO, MFA, and identity lifecycle; macOS and Jamf; Microsoft 365; SaaS administration and integration; networking; endpoint security and patching; virtualization and VDI; IT asset lifecycle.
• Hands‑on experience designing and operating a hardened office environment: networking and on‑prem infrastructure (LAN and Wi‑Fi, switching, firewalls, VPN) plus physical devices like badge and camera systems, and meeting‑room AV.
• Experience in a regulated, security‑conscious, or highly available environment; financial services helpful, not required.

Salary Band: $100,000 - $130,000

Additional Information

Our Values

• Mission driven:We know that financial well‑being has a dramatic impact on an individual’s quality of life. We are passionate about helping people in this domain.
• Extreme ownership:We are responsible for the results to our clients, teammates, and shareholders. We own everything in our domain that affects these results.
• Boldness:Thinking small is a self‑fulfilling prophecy. Thinking big inspire results. We would rather fail at the meaningful than succeed at the trivial.
• Ruthless prioritization:We want to do more than we possibly can. We are disciplined with the use of our precious people, time and money. That means saying no to a lot of good ideas so we canfocus on the most important thing.
• Integrity:We earn and maintain trust by always prioritizing our clients’ interests; it must never be compromised.

Competitive Pay and Stock Options

Comprehensive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance

Retirement benefit with employer match

Unlimited PTO

Transparent and open communication with leadership

M1 is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity across the company. M1 does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.