Software Engineer - Ledger

cardless; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 295,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health & dental

Catered lunches

Commuter benefit

Parental leave

Team building events

Flexible PTO

Apple equipment

401k plan

Job summary

Cardless is building the infrastructure for brands to design, build, and launch financial products. As a Software Engineer on Ledger, you’ll own the system that tracks what cardholders owe and what we owe them, including the ledger and reconciliation to GL.

This role requires architectural ownership and deep backend expertise in a startup context. Based in San Francisco, you’ll collaborate with Finance, Compliance, and partners to ensure accuracy, regulatory readiness, and scalable payments

Qualifications

• 6+ years building production backend systems with ledger, core banking, money movement, or payments work.
• Built a double-entry ledger or in-house card processing/infrastructure, or migrated to in-house rails.
• Thinks in invariants: idempotency and immutability; understands event sourcing.

Responsibilities

• Own the double-entry ledger system of record for balances across card programs.
• Build credit mechanics: billing cycle close, statement generation, interest accrual, payment allocation, fees.
• Own reconciliation from sub-ledger to GL and detect breakage before close.
• Set architecture and prioritization of what gets built in what order.
• Collaborate with Finance, Compliance, and partners to meet audit requirements.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Event sourcing

Immutability

API design

Ambiguity tolerance

Job description

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 Software Engineer on Ledger at Cardless, you'll own the system that tracks what every cardholder owes us and what we owe them.

The ledger is the system of record for balances across every card program we run. Statements, interest, how payments get applied, what a customer sees in the app, what we report to our partners: all of it depends on the ledger being right. You'll own its architecture.

Credit ledgers are harder than most. A balance revolves, accrues interest, gets billed on a cycle, and takes payments that have to be applied across principal, fees, and interest in a particular order. When any of that is wrong it turns up in someone's statement, or in a regulatory filing, or in a reconciliation break three weeks later. This is a senior-to-staff role with real architectural ownership, and it's a founding engineering role on our ledger and credit systems.

What you’ll do

• Own the double-entry ledger that is the system of record for balances across every card program we run, and the invariants it has to hold

• Build the credit mechanics on top of it: billing cycle close, statement generation, interest accrual, payment allocation, fees, delinquency, and charge-off

• Own reconciliation from sub-ledger to GL, and build the break detection that catches silent failures before close

• Set the architecture and decide what gets built in what order

• Work directly with Finance, Compliance, and our partners on the requirements a ledger has to satisfy to survive an audit

What we’re looking for

• 6+ years building production backend systems, with meaningful time on ledger, core banking, money movement, or payments platform work

• You've built one, not integrated with one. At least one of: a double-entry ledger that became the system of record for balances; in-house card processing or authorization and settlement infrastructure; or a migration of a card or money-movement program off a third‑party processor onto in‑house rails

• You think in invariants: idempotency, immutability, event sourcing, what has to hold at all times and how you'd prove it holds

• Strong distributed systems and API fundamentals in a modern backend language

• You're comfortable with ambiguity. You'll be scoping your own work, and you'll have to explain your tradeoffs to colleagues across functions

Bonus Points

• Credit card ledgers specifically: revolving credit, billing cycles, interest accrual, APR, minimum payments, payment waterfalls, installment plans, Reg Z / TILA

• Auth-to-settlement lifecycle: pending versus posted, capture, clearing, network files, ISO 8583, refunds and reversals, dispute and chargeback accounting

• You built or rewrote the ledger at a Chime, Stripe, Block, Affirma, Brex, Ramp, Mercury, Increase, or Modern Treasury and want to own one end to end

• You built an issuing platform at a Marqeta, Lithic, Highnote, Galileo and want to be on the program side of it

This role isn't a fit if

• You want a spec handed to you. Scoping the work is part of the job

• You reach for eventual consistency by default

• You want distance from Finance, Compliance, and operations

• You want to work remotely

Why this role

A ledger is one of the few systems where there's no partial credit. A balance is either right or it isn't, and everyone downstream finds out which. You'd own that across every program on the platform, which is a wider surface than most ledger roles come with.

Compensation

This role has an annual starting salary range of $190,000 - $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

San Francisco, CA — our office is in the Jackson Square district. This role is 5 days a week in office.