Senior Software Engineer, Lending

Chime Financial, Inc; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 164,000 - 259,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

401k match

Medical, dental, vision benefits

Generous vacation policy

Parental leave

Wellness stipend

Fertility benefits (Maven)

In-office policy: 4 days in office + 1

Job summary

Chime is seeking a Senior Software Engineer in Lending to architect and deliver backend systems connecting member-facing lending products with shared platforms. You will drive cross-team initiatives, own critical problems, and shape APIs for safe, scalable growth.

You’ll collaborate with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations to translate ambiguous problems into durable technical solutions and raise the bar on engineering ownership and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production software at scale.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals, ideally with Ruby on Rails or a comparable framework, and experience building APIs and distributed systems in production.
• Experience with transactional databases, asynchronous processing, caching, and large-scale application architecture.
• Strong system design judgment and the ability to make sound tradeoffs across correctness, scalability, resiliency, speed, and long-term maintainability.
• A track record of leading complex projects that span multiple teams, systems, or business workflows.
• Experience working in fintech, lending, banking, payments, risk, or other high-integrity domains where correctness, traceability, and operational rigor matter deeply.
• A high-ownership mindset and comfort operating in ambiguity, including the ability to create clarity, drive alignment, and move important work forward without waiting for perfect structure.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across engineering and cross-functional teams in a low-ego, effective way.
• A product mindset and strong instincts for connecting technical decisions to member experience and business outcomes.
• Experience mentoring engineers and helping teams raise the bar on design quality, testing, operational excellence, and engineering ownership.
• Curiosity, sound judgment, and a genuine desire to understand systems deeply and improve them over time.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture and delivery of backend systems that connect member-facing lending products with shared platforms such as Credit Risk, Capital Markets, Repayments, servicing, and core financial systems
• Drive complex, cross-team initiatives from problem definition through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration, especially where multiple teams or domains need to move in sync
• Own technical problems with real business and member impact, and bring structure, momentum, and clarity when the path is not obvious
• Define and evolve APIs, integration patterns, and data contracts so product teams can move faster without compromising safety, correctness, or reuse
• Design for scale, resiliency, observability, and operational excellence, with strong handling of failures, retries, reconciliation, auditability, and edge cases
• Identify opportunities to turn one-off product needs into reusable platform capabilities that unlock future velocity across Lending
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations to translate ambiguous problems into practical, high-leverage technical solutions
• Influence how product and platform teams work together by clarifying ownership, reducing integration friction, and improving the quality of technical decision-making across boundaries
• Participate in on-call and incident response, and lead efforts to turn production lessons into lasting improvements in systems, tooling, and engineering practices
• Mentor other engineers through design reviews, technical feedback, and hands-on partnership, helping raise the leadership capacity of the broader org
• Contribute to roadmap and strategy conversations by identifying where platform investments can unlock multiple product outcomes over time

Skills

Ruby on Rails

APIs

Distributed systems

Backend architecture

System design

On-call / incident response

Mentoring engineers

Fintech domain experience

Job description

About the role

Chime’s Lending org builds the products and platforms that give members access to fair, transparent credit and liquidity when they need it most, from Earned Wage Access through MyPay, to flexible overdraft with SpotMe, to longer-term Instant Loans, and the platforms that power credit decisions, funding, repayments, and servicing behind the scenes.

We operate some of Chime’s most consequential systems. Our teams build real-time money movement and decisioning infrastructure at scale, including underwriting and eligibility, ledgering and reconciliation, capital markets workflows, repayment systems, and financial transactions that must be correct, resilient, and auditable.

As a Senior Software Engineer in Lending, you’ll work at the seam between member-facing products and the platforms that make them possible. This is a role for engineers who want to own more than a single service or feature area. You’ll lead technical initiatives that cut across products, platforms, and partner teams, helping shape how Lending evolves as a system, not just how one team ships.

You’ll design and build backend systems where correctness, reliability, speed, and operational rigor matter deeply. You’ll partner closely with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations to turn ambiguous opportunities into durable solutions, influence technical direction across team boundaries, and help raise the bar for how Lending engineers build together.

The base salary offered for this role and level of experience will begin at $164,000 and up to $259,000. Full-time employees are also eligible for a bonus, competitive equity package, and benefits. The actual base salary offered may be higher, depending on your location, skills, qualifications, and experience.

Why join Lending?

Work on systems that matter

The products and platforms we build directly impact millions of members and sit at the center of Chime’s mission to help everyday people unlock financial progress. The problems are complex, the stakes are real, and the work matters.

Own a bigger surface area

This role is designed for engineers who want broader scope. You won’t be limited to a narrow feature lane. You’ll work across product experiences and shared infrastructure, helping connect strategy, systems, and execution across Lending.

Build where product and platform meet

Some of the most interesting engineering work happens in the seams: where member experience depends on credit strategy, where product velocity depends on platform leverage, and where financial correctness meets business speed. This role sits in the middle of those seams and gives you meaningful influence over how they scale.

Operate in a fast-moving, high-accountability environment

Lending is a fast-paced fintech environment where we care about moving quickly and building well. We value thoughtful design, strong engineering judgment, high-quality code, and operational excellence. We also actively use AI where it can improve quality, speed, and leverage.

Grow your technical leadership

At L5, you’ll be expected to do more than deliver strong execution. You’ll lead through ambiguity, drive alignment across teams, shape architecture and engineering patterns, and improve how the org operates over time. This is a strong role for engineers who want to expand their influence and prepare for even larger technical scope.

In this role, you can expect to

• Lead end-to-end architecture and delivery of backend systems that connect member-facing lending products with shared platforms such as Credit Risk, Capital Markets, Repayments, servicing, and core financial systems
• Drive complex, cross-team initiatives from problem definition through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration, especially where multiple teams or domains need to move in sync
• Own technical problems with real business and member impact, and bring structure, momentum, and clarity when the path is not obvious
• Define and evolve APIs, integration patterns, and data contracts so product teams can move faster without compromising safety, correctness, or reuse
• Design for scale, resiliency, observability, and operational excellence, with strong handling of failures, retries, reconciliation, auditability, and edge cases
• Identify opportunities to turn one-off product needs into reusable platform capabilities that unlock future velocity across Lending
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations to translate ambiguous problems into practical, high-leverage technical solutions
• Influence how product and platform teams work together by clarifying ownership, reducing integration friction, and improving the quality of technical decision-making across boundaries
• Participate in on-call and incident response, and lead efforts to turn production lessons into lasting improvements in systems, tooling, and engineering practices
• Mentor other engineers through design reviews, technical feedback, and hands-on partnership, helping raise the leadership capacity of the broader org
• Contribute to roadmap and strategy conversations by identifying where platform investments can unlock multiple product outcomes over time

To thrive in this role, you have

• 8+ years of experience building and operating production software at scale, with a strong track record of owning backend systems end-to-end
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals, ideally with Ruby on Rails or a comparable framework, and experience building APIs and distributed systems in production
• Experience with transactional databases, asynchronous processing, caching, and large-scale application architecture
• Strong system design judgment and the ability to make sound tradeoffs across correctness, scalability, resiliency, speed, and long-term maintainability
• A track record of leading complex projects that span multiple teams, systems, or business workflows
• Experience working in fintech, lending, banking, payments, risk, or other high-integrity domains where correctness, traceability, and operational rigor matter deeply
• A high-ownership mindset and comfort operating in ambiguity, including the ability to create clarity, drive alignment, and move important work forward without waiting for perfect structure
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across engineering and cross-functional teams in a low-ego, effective way
• A product mindset and strong instincts for connecting technical decisions to member experience and business outcomes
• Experience mentoring engineers and helping teams raise the bar on design quality, testing, operational excellence, and engineering ownership
• Curiosity, sound judgment, and a genuine desire to understand systems deeply and improve them over time

Nice-to-have

• Experience with lending or credit systems such as underwriting, eligibility, line assignment, limits, repayments, collections, servicing, or decisioning
• Experience with financial platform domains such as capital markets workflows, reconciliations, ledgering, accounting interfaces, partner integrations, or bank integrations
• Familiarity with experimentation, analytics, and data-informed systems used to safely evolve decisioning and product strategy over time
• Experience helping product teams adopt shared platform capabilities through strong APIs, abstractions, internal tooling, or platform patterns

A little about us

At Chime, we believe that everyone can achieve financial progress. We created Chime—a financial technology company, not a bank*—on the premise that core banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. Through our user-friendly tools and intuitive platforms, we empower our members to take control of their finances and work towards their goals. Whether it’s starting a savings account, purchasing a first car or home, launching a business, or pursuing higher education, we’re proud to have helped millions unlock their financial potential.

We’re a team of problem solvers, dreamers, and builders with one shared obsession: our members. From day one, Chimers have worked tirelessly to out-hustle and out-execute competitors to bring our mission to life. Their grit and determination inspire us to work harder every day to deliver the very best experience possible. We each bring an owner’s mindset to our work, refusing to be outdone and holding ourselves accountable to meet and exceed the highest bars for our teams, our company, and our members.

We believe in being bold, dreaming big, and taking risks, while also working together, embracing our diverse perspectives, and giving each other honest feedback. Our culture remains deeply entrepreneurial, encouraging every Chimer to see themselves as stewards of our mission to help everyday Americans unlock their financial progress.

We know that to achieve our mission, we must earn and keep people’s trust—so we hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity in everything we do. These aren’t just words on a wall—our values are embedded in every aspect of our business, serving as a north star that guides us as we work to help millions achieve their financial potential.

Because if we don’t—who will?

*Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A., Members FDIC.

What we offer for our full-time, regular employees

• Our in-office work policy is designed to keep you connected - with four days a week in the office and Fridays from home for those near one of our offices, plus team and company-wide events depending on location. Whether you’re coming in regularly or are part of our fully remote program, you’ll stay engaged with your work and teammates.
• In-office perks including backup child, elder, and/or pet care, plus a subsidized commuter benefit to support your regular commute
• Competitive salary based on experience
• 401k match plus great medical, dental, vision, life, and disability benefits
• Generous vacation policy and company-wide Chime Days, bonus company-wide paid days off
• 1% of your time off to support local community organizations of your choice
• Annual wellness stipend to use towards eligible wellness related expenses
• Up to 24 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents and 12 weeks of paid parental leave for non-birthing parents
• Access to Maven, a family planning tool, with $15k lifetime reimbursement for egg freezing, fertility treatments, adoption, and more.
• In-person and virtual events to connect with your fellow Chimers—think cooking classes, guided meditations, music festivals, mixology classes, paint nights, etc., and delicious snack boxes, too!
• A challenging and fulfilling opportunity to join one of the most experienced teams in FinTech and help millions unlock financial progress

We know that great work can’t be done without a diverse team and inclusive environment. That’s why we specifically look for individuals of varying strengths, skills, backgrounds, and ideas to join our team. We believe this gives us a competitive advantage to better serve our members and helps us all grow as Chimers and individuals.

Chime is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital or family status, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis under provincial, federal, state, and local laws, regulations, or ordinances. We will also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of state and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Cook County Ordinance, NYC Fair Chance Act, and the LA City Fair Chance Ordinance, and consistent with Canadian provincial and federal laws. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation during any stage of the application process, please contact: [e-mail].

To learn more about how Chime collects and uses your personal information during the application process, please see theChime Applicant Privacy Notice.