Senior Staff Software Engineer - Payments Risk

BILL; California (MO); On-site; USD 186,000 - 258,700; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

HSA and FSA accounts

Life insurance

Disability coverage

EAP

Job summary

BILL is hiring a Senior Staff Software Engineer for its Risk Engineering organization to own core risk and onboarding platform services, including real-time decisioning engines and access controls. You will shape the technical roadmap, partner with AWS and data science teams, and embed AI-assisted workflows to raise velocity and code quality across the enterprise.

The role emphasizes production-grade systems, security-by-default design, and collaboration with product, compliance, and

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, fintech or security platforms.
• Strong experience with distributed, low-latency systems.
• Hands-on with access control systems (RBAC, PAM).
• Experience in AWS and cloud security controls.

Responsibilities

• Architect and own risk/onboarding platform services with low latency.
• Define technical roadmap for risk and access control infra with Zero Trust.
• Collaborate with data science to operationalize ML models for fraud/risk.

Skills

Java/JVM

AWS

Security engineering

RBAC

AI tooling

Machine learning

Tools

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Job description

Innovate with Purpose

At BILL, we believe in empowering the businesses that drive our economy. By replacing outdated financial processes with innovative tools, we help businesses—from startups to established brands—make smarter decisions and gain control of their operations. And we don’t stop there: we’re creating the future of financial automation so businesses can spend more time on what matters.

BILL builds high performing teams and we seek to hire the best talent for every role. We're committed to building a workplace that fosters inclusion and diverse perspectives, valuing each person’s unique skills and experiences. Working here means you become part of a vision-driven team that’s ready to tackle challenges and build cutting-edge solutions.

Make Your Impact Within a Rapidly Growing Fintech Company

Join BILL's Risk Engineering organization as a Senior Staff Software Engineer and take on some of the most consequential technical challenges in fintech. Our Risk Engineering team builds the platforms that protect hundreds of thousands of SMBs from financial harm, owning the risk decisioning infrastructure, onboarding compliance systems, access control frameworks, and real‑time signal processing pipelines that operate across payment, lending, and spend products. The team sits at the intersection of security engineering and financial risk, where the decisions you build into software directly affect whether a small business can trust BILL with their money.

In this role, you will drive the technical vision and delivery of risk platform services with a security‑by‑default, platform‑first mindset. You will partner closely with Product, data scientists, compliance stakeholders, and infrastructure teams to turn complex fraud, regulatory, and identity signals into reliable, low‑latency systems. A key part of this role is elevating engineering excellence by embedding AI‑assisted workflows into design, testing, and development cycles to accelerate team velocity and code quality. This is hands‑on technical leadership: you will not only define strategy but deliver production systems that raise the platform and security bar across the enterprise.

Responsibilities

• Architect and own core risk and onboarding platform services, including real‑time decisioning engines, transaction monitoring pipelines, identity and workflow orchestration systems, and access eligibility controls that process high volumes of payments with strict latency, reliability, and accuracy requirements.
• Set the technical vision for cross‑product onboarding and compliance platforms, establishing extensible patterns that support new customer types, products, and global geographies while meeting diverse regulatory requirements.
• Define and deliver a technical roadmap for risk and access control infrastructure, incorporating Zero Trust principles, role‑based access controls, and privileged access management patterns into BILL's risk platform.
• Partner with AWS infrastructure and cloud architecture teams to design and implement security controls that enforce security‑by‑default across BILL's cloud environment, proactively identifying and remediating gaps in hygiene and configuration.
• Collaborate with data science teams to operationalize machine learning models for fraud detection and risk scoring, designing integration patterns that move models from research to production with appropriate observability, auditability, and controls.
• Define and champion standards for AI‑assisted engineering, embedding tools into design reviews, testing, and debugging workflows to improve delivery speed and code quality across the organization.
• Lead end‑to‑end delivery of cross‑functional risk and onboarding initiatives, coordinating across engineering, compliance, legal, and operations from requirements through production deployment.
• Mentor and elevate engineers on the risk team, investing in technical growth and raising the overall standard for system design, code quality, security thinking, and AI adoption.

We'd Love to Chat If You Have

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time spent building risk, fraud, identity, onboarding compliance, or security platform systems at scale in a fintech or financial services environment.
• Deep expertise designing and building distributed, high‑availability, low‑latency systems in Java or a comparable JVM language, with strong command of system design tradeoffs under real‑world production constraints.
• Hands‑on experience implementing access control systems, including RBAC, privileged access management, or authentication and authorization frameworks in large‑scale SaaS or cloud‑native environments.
• Experience deploying and securing applications in AWS, with working knowledge of cloud security controls, IAM policies, and infrastructure hardening practices.
• Demonstrated track record leading large technical initiatives across engineering, compliance, and executive audiences in ambiguous, high‑growth environments.
• Experience leveraging AI tools to meaningfully improve engineering delivery speed, code quality, or team workflows at an individual or organizational level.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience integrating machine learning models into production risk or fraud pipelines, including feature engineering, model serving infrastructure, and monitoring for model drift.
• Background working with real‑time streaming architectures such as Kafka for risk signal processing or event‑driven fraud detection systems, and familiarity with observability tooling such as Datadog or OpenTelemetry.
• Familiarity with financial compliance and regulatory frameworks relevant to payment, lending, or onboarding risk, including KYC/KYB, BSA/AML, or transaction monitoring.

Please note that this position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Applicants must have authorization to work in the United States without requiring visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Our ranges for each role and job level are based on a variety of factors including candidate experience, expertise, and geographic location and may vary from the amounts listed below. The role is also eligible for a competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance, 401(k) retirement plan, flexible spending & health savings account, paid holidays, paid time off, and other company benefits.

Estimated salary ranges by zone:

• Zone 1 – San Francisco Bay Area CA, New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles County: $206,900–$258,700 USD
• Zone 2 – CA (Non San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County), Austin TX, Massachusetts: $186,200–$232,800 USD
• Zone 3 – Utah (includes Utah office), Houston TX, Florida, North Carolina: $175,900–$219,900 USD

What’s in it for you?

Redefining how businesses automate their work is a fast‑paced, exciting, and fun environment, but we also have benefits and perks to ensure the magic isn’t only experienced by our customers, but also by our employees.

Here is a preview of some of the amazing benefits here at BILL:

• 100% paid employee health, dental, and vision plans (choose HMO, PPO, or HDHP)
• HSA & FSA accounts
• Life insurance, long & short‑term disability coverage
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• 11+ observed holidays and wellness days and flexible time off
• Employee Stock Purchase Program with employee discounts
• Wellness & fitness initiatives
• Employee recognition and referral programs
• And much more

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We welcome people of all backgrounds, abilities, and identities to bring their authentic selves and contribute to our culture.

We are committed to a transparent, inclusive hiring process that reflects our values. If you need accommodations at any stage, please contact [e-mail]. To ensure a fair evaluation, our Candidate Integrity Policy prohibits the use of unapproved external assistance, including generative AI, during live interviews or assessments. Doing so will result in a review and potential disqualification.

Our Applicant Privacy Notice describes how BILL treats the personal information it receives from applicants.