Sr. Staff Engineer - Digital Assets

Early Warning Services LLC; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive medical, dental, and vision plans

401(k) retirement plan with company match

Paid time off including volunteer days

Job summary

Early Warning Services LLC is seeking a Lead Engineer to guide technical strategy and architecture for digital asset payment solutions. The role involves collaboration across engineering teams, driving consistency, and overcoming scalability challenges.

The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in distributed systems, sophisticated knowledge of payment networks, and leadership in crafting resilient payment architectures.

This position offers a hybrid work model based in San Francisco, along with comprehensive benefits that include medical, dental, and generous PTO.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant experience in software engineering.
• Proficient in cloud infrastructure management.
• Hands-on experience in design of scalable systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical strategy for cross-border payment capabilities.
• Mentor engineers and guide in building compliant payment solutions.
• Collaborate with product teams to conceptualize and build features.

Skills

Leadership in cross-border payment systems

Distributed systems development

Java/Spring proficiency

Cloud solutions experience

Event-driven architecture

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

MS or PhD preferred

Tools

Docker

Google Cloud Platform

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

Job Overview

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting‑edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze, and so much more.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model.

Eligibility

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

This position leads technical strategy and architecture for complex cross‑border and digital asset payment capabilities, driving consistency, quality, and long‑term health across multiple engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Partner with software engineering, product, and architecture to shape engineering approaches, share knowledge and experience.
• Own the technical strategy for broad or complex requirements with insightful and forward‑looking approaches that go beyond the direct team and solve large open‑ended problems.
• Own architectural design and technical patterns for cross‑border money movement and digital asset settlement systems.
• Resolve complex technical and scalability challenges across distributed, regulated payment platforms.
• Mentor engineers and guide teams in building secure, resilient, and compliant global payment solutions.
• Responsible for department‑wide design, patterns and code approaches; review and validate effectiveness of code output from multiple teams.
• Accountable for resolving technical conflict within and between multiple teams.
• Drive all aspects of technical architecture, design, prototyping and implementation in support of both product needs and overall technology strategy.
• Represent engineering in cross‑functional team sessions and present sound arguments to persuade others.
• Lead a broad functional area and direct efforts through the functional team members along with the team’s overall planning.
• Collaborate and partner with product managers, designers and other engineering groups to conceptualize, build new features and create product descriptions.
• Actively own features or systems and define their long‑term health while improving surrounding systems.
• Assist support and operations teams in identifying and quickly resolving production issues.
• Develop and implement tests to ensure quality, performance, and scalability of our application.
• Develop and mentor other engineers; may serve as a technical leader for cross‑functional projects.
• Actively seek ways to improve engineering standards, tooling, and processes.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical field.
• 12+ years of relevant experience.
• 9+ years in development of distributed systems, SaaS, cloud solutions, micro‑services.
• Hands‑on Docker experience.
• Proven experience leading design and evolution of large‑scale payment or cross‑border transaction platforms in regulated environments.
• Deep technical understanding of digital asset or stablecoin‑based systems, including security, scalability, and operational reliability considerations.
• 2+ years in development of front‑end solutions.
• Hands‑on familiarity with modern frameworks (Angular/React).
• 8+ years of work experience with Java/Spring; proficiency in Maven/Gradle.
• Demonstrated delivery of business‑critical systems to market.
• Ability to influence and collaborate across multiple departments.
• Experience designing and developing scalable systems.
• Experience with event‑driven architecture and messaging frameworks (Pub/Sub, Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Working experience with cloud infrastructure (Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure).
• Knowledge of mature engineering practices (CI/CD, testing, secure coding).
• Knowledge of SDLC best practices, software development methodologies (Agile, Scrum, LEAN) and DevOps practices.
• Background and drug screen.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or PhD.
• JavaScript and scripting frameworks experience (JQuery, AngularJS).
• Monitoring and alerting systems experience (AppDynamics).
• Computer language experience (C#, Ruby, Python, PHP).
• Knowledge of ACH/EFT.
• Knowledge of real‑time payment networks (RTP, FedNow).
• FinTech experience.
• Kubernetes experience.

Benefits

• Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans.
• Company contributions to Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre‑tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA).
• 401(k) retirement plan with 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on first 6% deferral.
• Paid time off: flexible time off for exempt employees, generous PTO for non‑exempt employees, 11 paid company holidays, and a paid volunteer day.
• 12 weeks paid parental leave.
• Maven Family Planning support.

EEO Statement

Early Warning Services, LLC considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status, or any factor prohibited by law. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of employees.