Senior Software Engineer, Payments

GovWell

New York (NY)

On-site

USD 160,000 - 260,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Equity / stock options

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) program

Flexible PTO

Job summary

GovWell is building the AI operating system for government services and is hiring a Payments Engineer to own the financial backbone of the platform. This role demands shaping the core domain and architecture with autonomy and accountability.

The position offers a hybrid work culture with regular in‑person collaboration at our New York City HQ (3+ days/week) and flexibility to work remotely. You’ll report to the CTO, Ben Cohen, and contribute to a scalable payments platform.

Qualifications

Experience designing financial or transactional systems where correctness isn’t optional.
Strong opinions on payments system architecture and ability to shape the domain.

Responsibilities

Design the financial architecture for the system of record for government payments.
Build a fully auditable, mathematically consistent ledger.
Turn fee calculation into precise, auditable logic.
Make deposits, refunds, and partial payments first‑class citizens in the platform.

Skills

Idempotency

Webhooks

Payment integrations

Tools

Stripe

Finix

Job description

About GovWell

We the people — and the taxpayers — deserve good government. Yet today, interacting with government services is often frustrating and inefficient. GovWell is building the AI operating system transforming how governments serve communities, starting with local agencies.

About GovWell

GovWell replaces legacy software for municipalities and counties, empowering public servants to radically streamline public services and cut internal processing time for permits and licenses by up to 95%.

Founded in 2023, GovWell powers 5,000+ mission-critical processes for agencies in 35+ states serving millions of residents. The company has raised $35M in funding from Insight Partners, Work-Bench, and Bienville Capital, and the team works in person at GovWell HQ in New York City. Read more about our founding story in TechCrunch.

Role Overview

Payments infrastructure for local government is a genuinely hard problem — real money, strict audit requirements, dozens of different fee types and collection methods, all running underneath workflows that can't afford to break. It's also a problem that's specific to how municipalities and counties actually operate, not something you can bolt on from a generic payments product.

GovWell is hiring a Payments Engineer to own this space and build it into the financial backbone the rest of the platform runs on. This isn't a feature added to an existing system — it's a domain still being defined, which means the person who takes this on will shape the core architecture, not just extend someone else's.

We have strong opinions about the principles that this deserves — real auditability, precision in how fees are computed, a system finance teams can actually trust — but we're looking for someone who can take that point of view, sharpen it, and build it. Because so much of this is still unwritten, you'll have more autonomy and ownership here than in almost any other role at GovWell.

We have a hybrid work culture that combines regular in-person collaboration at our New York City office (3+ days per week) with flexibility to work remotely.

This role reports directly to our CTO and Co-Founder, Ben Cohen.

Why GovWell?

A mission that matters: Building AI-powered products to fix outdated government systems isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s a historic opportunity to improve our foundational relationship with government and ensure trillions of tax dollars result in high quality services. WATCH: Mission & Vision with CEO & Co-Founder Troy LeCaire
Real-world impact: GovWell’s product is the system of record for government services that affect millions of Americans. From streamlining permitting for small businesses to accelerating affordable housing development, your work will make an immediate difference.
Join a startup in hyper-growth: We’ve found product-market fit and are scaling the business very quickly (4X ARR growth in the last year). As an early team member, you’ll learn what it takes to build a successful startup. You’ll work closely with the founders while enjoying exceptional autonomy and ownership over your work.

What You’ll Do

Design the financial architecture GovWell runs on — the system of record for every dollar municipalities collect, refund, or hold on someone's behalf.
Build a real ledger from the ground up: one that’s fully auditable, mathematically consistent, and trusted by finance teams without a second look.
Turn fee calculation into a system that computes with precision, instead of something staff track by hand or reconstruct after the fact.
Make partial payments, deposits, and refunds first‑class citizens of the platform, not workarounds bolted on after the core system was built.
Own the migration from where payments live today to where they need to be — with real customers, real money, and no room for a clean‑slate do‑over.
Partner directly with the people who depend on this system being right: finance teams, municipal staff, and the engineers building the workflows this ledger will support.
Set the technical standard other engineers build against once this domain exists — you’re not implementing someone else’s design, you’re establishing it.

Who you are

Experience designing financial or transactional systems where correctness isn’t optional — payments, billing, ledgers, or similar domains where an unbalanced number is a real problem, not a bug ticket.
You have real opinions about how a payments system should be architected, and you want a role where you can bring them, not just implement someone else’s spec.
Comfortable with ambiguity at the domain-design level: this isn’t “build this feature,” it’s “help decide what the right abstraction is,” and you find that exciting rather than uncomfortable.
Experience with idempotency, webhooks, and payment processor integrations (Stripe, Finix, or similar) is a strong plus.
You think in terms of invariants and edge cases — what happens when a webhook fires twice, when a fee schedule changes mid‑invoice, when a refund needs to partially reverse a payment that’s already been partially paid.
You’re excited to work with the latest AI models, both in the product and in your own development workflow.
You’ve owned a large product area end‑to‑end and can point to something specific you shipped and stayed accountable for.
Strong product instincts: you ask questions until you actually understand the customer’s problem, not just the ticket description.
You align closely with our Core Values.

Our tech stack