Staff Engineer - Fraud Prevention

Sardine; United States; Remote; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous cash and equity

Remote-first culture

Flexible paid time off

Health, dental, vision coverage

401k / RRSP matching

MacBook Pro delivered

Home office setup stipend

Meal stipend

Social stipend

Learning stipend

Job summary

Sardine is seeking a Staff/Lead Architect to own platform strategy for real-time fraud systems. You will architect ultra-low-latency backend services and a high-throughput rules engine, while shaping data access, partitioning, and caching across a multi-cloud ecosystem.

You will mentor senior engineers, drive reliability and developer velocity, and collaborate with stakeholders to raise architectural standards across Consumer and Business Fraud teams.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering with Staff/Lead Architect level experience.
• Proven ability to design highly available distributed systems with ultra-low latency.
• Hands-on experience with stream processing in production environments.
• Expertise in polyglot persistence across multiple database types.
• Strong platform engineering mindset focused on reliability and velocity.

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple engineering teams and align platform strategy across stakeholders.
• Architect and optimize ultra-low-latency backend services and a high-throughput rules engine.
• Design data access, partitioning and caching across multi-cloud databases.
• Build robust pipelines for real-time feature computations and aggregations.
• Mentor engineers and uphold high technical standards from conception to delivery.

Skills

Staff/Lead Architect

Distributed systems

Real-time data processing

Backend engineering

Tools

Kafka

Flink

SQS

Pub/Sub

Job description

Who we are:

Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. Our integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Sardine’s platform is strengthened by one of the fastest-growing fraud consortiums in the market, spanning more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.

Our culture:

We have hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, Toronto, and São Paulo. However, we maintain a remote-first work culture. #WorkFromAnywhere We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation. We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.

Location:

Remote - USA or Canada - Given the strategic nature of this role, we expect a degree of flexibility for somewhat regular in-person meetings with our leadership team in San Francisco, Berkeley. From Home / Beach / Mountain / Cafe / Anywhere! We are a remote-first company with a globally distributed team. You can find your productive zone and work from there.

About the Role

You will serve as the technical steward and platform architect for both our Consumer Fraud and Business Fraud engineering teams. This position involves driving technical strategy, optimizing mission-critical infrastructure, mentoring engineers, and assuming broad ownership of a platform that processes massive volumes of data in real-time.

What you’ll be doing:

Act as the overarching technical leader for multiple teams, partnering with stakeholders to unify platform strategy. Architect, design, and optimize ultra-low-latency backend services and a high-throughput rules engine. Design optimal data access patterns, partitioning strategies, and caching layers across our complex, multi-cloud database ecosystem. Develop robust pipelines for massive parallel execution of real-time feature computations and aggregations. Play a pivotal role in shaping engineering culture, mentoring senior engineers, and driving high technical standards from conception to delivery.

What you’ll need:

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record operating at a Staff, Principal, or Lead Architect level.
• Deep expertise in building highly available, distributed systems with strict ultra-low latency.
• Hands-on experience working with stream processing frameworks (e.g., Kafka, Flink, SQS, PubSub) in production environments.
• Advanced proficiency in polyglot persistence, with experience tuning data models across Document, Wide-Column, and Relational databases.
• A strong platform engineering mindset focused on reliability, observability, and developer velocity.
• Proficiency in communicating complex architectural concepts and driving cross-team consensus.

Benefits we offer:

• Generous compensation in cash and equity
• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested
• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture
• Flexible paid time off and Year-end break
• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific
• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific
• MacBook Pro delivered to your door
• One-time stipend to set up a home office, desk, chair, screen, etc.
• Monthly meal stipend
• Monthly social meet-up stipend
• Annual health and wellness stipend
• Annual Learning stipend
• Join a fast-growing company with world-class professionals from around the world.

If you are seeking a meaningful career, you found the right place, and we would love to hear from you. To learn more about how we process your personal information and your rights in regards to your personal information as an applicant and Sardine employee, please visit our Applicant and Worker Privacy Notice .