Senior Staff Software Engineer

EarnIn; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 279,000 - 341,000; Full time

Job summary

EarnIn is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our Mountain View-based product engineering team. You will design and develop core products, working cross-functionally with multiple teams in a hybrid role requiring two in-office days per week.

Compensation includes a base salary range and equity within a high-growth fintech environment. We value AI-native approaches, strong judgment, and the ability to own and defend technical work across distributed systems.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of backend or full-stack software development.
• Experience defining domain boundaries and service contracts across multiple teams.
• Hands-on use of AI coding and design tools with measurable impact.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture spanning multiple business units and define domain boundaries.
• Lead design and architecture reviews and document decisions clearly.
• Drive roadmaps for shared systems and ensure incremental adoption by teams.
• Prevent complexity through deprecation, cleanup, and clear ownership.
• Collaborate with Platform and BU engineering leads to ensure practical standards.
• Use AI tools daily for design exploration, code analysis, and reviews.

Skills

Backend development

Full-stack development

Domain-driven design

Event-driven systems

Clean architecture

AI tooling

Cross-team leadership

Communication

Fintech/regulation awareness

Education

CS degree or equivalent

Job description

As one of the first pioneers of earned wage access, our passion at EarnIn is building products that deliver real-time financial flexibility for people living paycheck to paycheck. Our community members access their earnings as they earn them, with options to spend, save, and grow their money without mandatory fees, interest rates, or credit checks. We’re fortunate to have an incredibly experienced leadership team, combined with world-class funding partners like A16Z, Matrix Partners, DST, Ribbit Capital, and a very healthy core business with a tremendous runway. We’re growing fast and excited to bring on world‑class talent to help shape the next chapter of our growth journey.

EarnIn is becoming an AI‑native company, embedding AI agents into how we build, analyze, and operate across every function. Teams use AI Agents to move from ideas to execution faster. By letting agents handle repetitive tasks, our people can focus on judgment, creativity, and hard problems. We pair this experimentation with the strict review and security guardrails our regulated financial environment requires, always keeping a focus on privacy and the people who rely on our products.

As a company, we are becoming AI‑native, and we encourage you to use AI tools throughout much of your interview process. If you use AI during the live interview, just say so; a quick, natural mention of how it helped and why you are using it is all we need. What we're evaluating is your judgment, reasoning, and ability to own and defend your work, not whether AI was involved. Some rounds, particularly those focused on your career history and past experiences, will not allow the use of AI, and we'll let you know of those in advance. When in doubt, ask your recruiter or interviewer directly.

POSITION SUMMARY

We seek an experienced, passionate, and resourceful Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our product engineering team. You will work cross‑functionally with various teams and contribute to designing and developing our core products. The Mountain View base salary range for this full‑time position is $279,000-$341,000, plus equity and benefits. We determine salary ranges by role, level, and location. This hybrid position in Mountain View requires 2 days of in‑office work per week.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own architecture that spans business units: define domain boundaries, decide where cross‑cutting concerns belong, and keep product logic, policy, and funds flow in the right layers.
• Lead design and architecture reviews across BUs, and record decisions in clear, durable architecture decision records.
• Drive decomposition and unification roadmaps for shared systems, including how user state is split across domains, and sequence the work so teams can adopt it incrementally.
• Prevent accumulated complexity by making deprecation, experiment cleanup, and clear ownership part of the design, not an afterthought.
• Partner with Platform, Money Platform, and BU engineering leads so standards are practical, adopted, and not duplicated.
• Use AI tools daily for design exploration, code analysis, and review, and build the agents, skills, and documentation that make our architecture legible to both engineers and AI coding agents.
• Set the bar for responsible AI‑assisted development: guardrails, review practices, and patterns that keep AI‑generated code consistent with our architecture.
• Mentor Staff and Senior engineers through design reviews, code, and architecture guidance, and help raise the technical bar across teams.
• Contribute to hiring and onboarding, and represent engineering in technical discussions with product, risk, and leadership.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in computer science, computer engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• 10+ years of backend or full‑stack software development, with a track record of designing and evolving large distributed systems.
• Demonstrated experience defining domain boundaries and service contracts across multiple teams, with practical knowledge of domain‑driven design, event‑driven systems, and clean architecture.
• Hands‑on, daily use of AI coding and design tools, with concrete examples of how they changed the way you work and the results you achieved.
• Experience leading cross‑team technical initiatives and influencing without direct authority, including resolving disagreements between teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to turn complex trade‑offs into clear decisions and documentation.
• Experience in fintech, payments, or other regulated, high‑reliability environments is a plus.
• Ability to thrive in a fast‑paced, dynamic, results‑driven environment.

At EarnIn, we believe that the best way to build a financial system that works for everyday people is by hiring a team that represents our diverse community. Our team is diverse not only in background and experience but also in perspective. We celebrate our diversity and strive to create a culture of belonging. EarnIn does not unlawfully discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, legally protected medical condition, family care status, military or veteran status, marital status, registered domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal laws. EarnIn is an E‑Verify participant.

EarnIn does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third‑party recruiting agencies in response to job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers or HR team.

A Note on AI in the Hiring Process:

EarnIn may use Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered tools during the hiring process, including tools that (i) generate summaries or notes for interviewers, (ii) review resumes, (iii) assist with scheduling interviews, (iv) help identify themes across candidate responses and profiles for a given role, and (v) assist with populating the interview scorecard.

Final hiring decisions are made by human interviewers and hiring managers.