Software Engineer – Feature Team

Smartleaf; United States; On-site; USD 135,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Smartleaf, based in Boston, is seeking a versatile generalist to enhance investment portfolio management applications. The role involves working end-to-end in web application development, collaborating closely with product management to design scalable solutions.

The ideal candidate should have a solid foundation in web technologies, a strong analytical mindset, and excellent communication skills. This position moves rapidly with responsibilities quickly earned, making a significant impact on the company's architecture evolution.

Qualifications

• 2-6+ years of experience building production web applications.
• Experience building interactive web applications using JavaScript.
• Strong understanding of computing fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Work on UI, JS, and back end to enhance investment portfolio management.
• Collaborate with product management to gather requirements.
• Explain issues and solutions to various stakeholders.

Skills

Web application development

JavaScript

Ruby on Rails

Linux command line

Analytical skills

Tools

PostgreSQL

Debian Linux

Job description

We are looking for a versatile generalist who thrives on a high degree of personal responsibility. You want to be involved in the whole process, all the way from requirements through implementation and deployment, and you enjoy working across the entire application instead of being stuck in a silo.

What You’ll Be Doing

As a member of our feature team, you’ll dive into our UI, JS and back end to make investment portfolio management scalable and easy to use. This is a complex domain that needs to be distilled into a clear experience that allows financial advisors to understand the impact of their choices and present the best possible information to their clients. You’ll work closely with our product management team and our users to gather requirements and design solutions that make this happen.

To solve the technical challenges, you’ll need to quickly wrap your head around complex user workflows. You’ll need a solid understanding of computing principles, strong analytical skills and good technical intuition. You’ll also need good communication skills to explain issues, potential solutions and tradeoffs in ways that make sense to a variety of stakeholders. Whenever you need to build internal tools or pick up new skills to achieve our goals, you’re able to roll up your sleeves and bootstrap quickly.

About Us

Smartleaf is a Boston-based investment portfolio rebalancing service handling over $90 billion in assets. Our next milestone is doubling our capacity to handle 1 million accounts. In order to get to this next level of scale, we need to evolve our architecture and you can have a big impact on how we do that.

We need a teammate who will ramp up quickly and help us get things done. We have more things to do than people to do them; if you are proactive, competent and reliable you can earn responsibility very quickly and help shape the way the department functions.

We value software engineering as a discipline. We’ll use AI where it reduces toil but not where it reduces understanding. We still expect every teammate to own and be able to explain every line of code they ship. Generating lines of code has never been our bottleneck; figuring out the right problem to solve and the right thing to build is far more important.

If you can bring skill, attention to detail and focus on getting working code into the world, while being a genuinely nice person to work with, we want to talk to you.

Requirements

• 2-6+ years of experience building production web applications
• Experience building interactive web applications using Javascript
• Strong understanding of computing fundamentals
• Proficiency in Ruby on Rails or similar MVC frameworks with demonstrated ability to learn our stack
• Demonstrated ability to understand user workflows and user experience
• Competence working in a Linux environment: familiarity with common command-line utilities and Unix process management; comfortable with bash scripting

You’ll Be a Great Fit If You

• Are a strong individual contributor who can gather requirements, propose a variety of solutions and follow through with implementation
• Are able to dive into unfamiliar codebases and quickly build up working knowledge of how multiple components interact
• Enjoy learning domain and application logic
• Are communicative and self-organizing
• Have a habit of effectively gaining new skills to suit the task
• Are constantly improving your own process to make yourself more effective

Location

We prefer candidates who are willing to work in a hybrid environment. Candidates in the Boston area should expect to work in‑office 2 days/week for the first 6 months. Candidates outside the Boston area should expect to travel to Boston for 1 week at a time several times in the first six months and 3x per year thereafter.

Visa Sponsorship

Smartleaf is unable to provide visa sponsorship now or in the future. This includes, but is not limited to, H‑1B, F‑1 (including OPT/CPT), J‑1, or any other employment‑based immigration or work authorization sponsorship. Candidates must have current and ongoing authorization to work in the United States without sponsorship.

Tech Stack

• Ruby on Rails, Javascript (Stimulus), React, PostgreSQL, Debian Linux
• Open source coding agents + local LLMs

Salary Range

$135,000 - $150,000/year depending on relevant experience