Software Engineer - Backend

Cardless; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 295,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful Start-up equity

Health, vision & dental coverage

Catered lunches

Commuter benefit

Parental leave

Team events & happy hours

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Cardless is hiring a Backend Engineer in San Francisco to work across partner card programs, with a focus on building new capabilities, scaling existing systems, and advancing in-house financial infrastructure. You’ll join a team that values strong systems thinking, end-to-end ownership, and collaboration with product, risk, and operations.

The role spans multiple levels, with compensation in a broad range and in-office work at the SF HQ.

Qualifications

• Strong systems thinking and problem solving.
• Experience building and operating production backend services, with a track record of shipping projects end to end.
• Solid fundamentals in distributed systems, APIs, databases, and infrastructure.
• Proficiency in a modern backend language and ecosystem. Java with Python for data work preferred.
• Clear communication and genuine care about correctness.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend systems that move real money, provide credit decisions, and serve hundreds of thousands of cardholders.
• Take projects from ambiguity to production: scoping, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and operations.
• Work across domains rather than inside a single service, moving to where the highest-value problem is.
• Partner with product, risk, compliance, operations, and vendor counterparts to ship resilient, regulated solutions.
• Improve reliability, observability, and developer experience, leaving systems in a better state.

Skills

Systems thinking

Backend services

Distributed systems

APIs

Communication

Tools

Java

Python

Job description

About Cardless

Cardless is building the infrastructure for the world's best companies to design, build, and launch financial products of their own. Companies like Coinbase and Bilt use Cardless to create credit cards that feel entirely their own. In an industry where branded financial products usually mean shared logos and shared control, Cardless is built to disappear. Our APIs and components shape the journey from the first application to every purchase, reward, and moment of support that follows, while we handle lending, compliance, and operations behind the scenes.

In September 2025, we raised a $60 million Series C led by Spark Capital, bringing our total funding to $170 million. The team is over 70 people and scaling toward profitability by year-end 2026.

We're looking for kind, humble people with high standards and low egos. We take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. We see what could be improved, make it so, and leave every product, system, and team better than we found it.

About the role

As a Backend Engineer at Cardless, you'll work across the systems that run our partners' card programs: applications and underwriting, accounts and ledgers, transactions and payments, rewards, risk, and the APIs our partners build against.

We keep this role deliberately general. There is more work than there are people, and the engineers who do best here are the ones who move to wherever the problem is. There are three kinds of work on our roadmap, and most people touch all three:

• Building things that don't exist yet, usually because a partner needs them to launch.
• Scaling and hardening what we already run, so the platform holds up as we add partners and volume.
• Laying groundwork for products we haven't launched, including bringing more of the core financial infrastructure in-house.

We care more about how you think than about what you've built before. Strong systems thinking and problem solving travel across domains. Direct experience in payments, lending, or financial infrastructure is a real advantage and we weight it heavily, but we would rather hire someone sharp who will learn this domain than someone who has only ever worked in it.

This role is open at multiple levels, from mid-level through staff. We calibrate level during the process rather than before it.

What you’ll do

• Design and build backend systems that move real money, make credit decisions, and serve hundreds of thousands of cardholders
• Take projects from ambiguity to production: scoping, design, implementation, testing, rollout, and the operational life that follows
• Work across domains rather than inside a single service, going where the highest-value problem is
• Partner with product, risk, compliance, operations, and our partner and vendor counterparts to ship things that hold up in a regulated environment
• Improve reliability, observability, and developer experience as you go, and leave each system better than you found it

What we’re looking for

• Strong systems thinking and problem solving. You can reason about an unfamiliar system, find where it breaks, and make a sound call with incomplete information
• Experience building and operating production backend services, with a track record of shipping projects end to end
• Solid fundamentals in distributed systems, APIs, databases, and infrastructure
• Proficiency in a modern backend language and ecosystem. We are primarily Java with Python for data work, and we do not expect you to have used ours
• Clear communication and genuine care about correctness. A bug here means someone's card declines at the grocery store or their credit report is wrong

Bonus Points

• Fintech, payments, lending, or card issuing experience: authorization, ledgers, settlement, reconciliation, disputes, or regulatory work
• Experience with workflow orchestration (Temporal, Step Functions) or event streaming
• You've built and maintained external, partner-facing APIs

This role isn't a fit if

• You want to own one narrow service and stay inside it
• You need fully specified requirements before you can start
• You want to work remotely

Why this role

Most backend work in fintech is maintaining a system someone else designed years ago. A large share of what we will be running in three years has not been built yet: new product verticals, more of the core financial infrastructure owned rather than rented, and a platform that has to serve many partners at once instead of one. You'll get real ownership early, see how a card program actually works end to end, and work with people who care about getting it right.

Compensation

This role is open at multiple levels. The range below spans mid-level through staff, and where an offer lands depends on the level we calibrate to during the process.

This role has an annual starting salary range of $160,000 - $295,000 + equity + benefits (see below). Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience, and specific work location.

Benefits

We're proud to offer our team excellent benefits:

Meaningful Start-up equity

100% health, vision & dental primary coverage

75% health, vision & dental dependent coverage

Catered lunches

$250/month Commuter benefit

Parental leave

Team building events & happy hours

Flexible PTO with a minimum of 15 days off per year

Apple equipment

401k plan

Location

We're headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a beautiful office in Jackson Square. This role is in-office 5 days a week.