Staff Software Engineer - Backend (Remote)

Empower.me; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Empower is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to lead technical initiatives and optimize engineering processes for their innovative financial solutions. This role offers meaningful ownership, competitive salary, complete support, and a remote-first work environment, aimed at reshaping customer financial futures.

Benefits

Competitive salary with equity

100% medical coverage

WFH reimbursement

Twice-yearly company onsites

Ongoing development opportunities

Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years developing web APIs within .NET (C#).
• Working experience with Entity Framework, RDMS queries, and asynchronous programming.
• General knowledge of Messaging Queues and PaaS environments.

Responsibilities

• Identify opportunities to enhance product direction and streamline designs.
• Lead technical initiatives and serve as lead interviewer.
• Mentor engineers and respond to incidents up to SEV1.

Skills

.NET (C#)

Web APIs

ORMs

Asynchronous Programming

Messaging Queues

PaaS environments

AI-powered development tools

Job description

EMPOWER OVERVIEW

Empower is shaking up an outdated financial system by providing real opportunity for our customers: the opportunity to get the cash they need, to access fair credit, and to change their financial story. Today, we’re helping millions of people find financial security through machine learning models that evaluate creditworthiness using a more inclusive lens and mobile-first products: Cash Advance, Thrive line of credit, and Petal credit cards. Tomorrow? Creating even more financial paths for our customers (and their wallets) to succeed.

This year, Empower ranked #65 on Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies list — our third year in a row cracking the top 100 — and was named by Forbes as one of the 25 Next Billion-Dollar Startups for 2024. Empower was also featured by Forbes on America’s Best Startup Employers list in 2023, and our Thrive line of credit product was named by Fast Company as one of 2022’s Next Big Things in Tech.

Empower is backed by Sequoia Capital, Blisce, and Icon Ventures. Ready to grow your impact and accelerate your career? Take a look at our open roles — we can’t wait to meet you.

The Opportunity: Staff Backend Engineer

As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the technical direction of our solutions. You will identify strategic technical needs, lead large-scale and complex product initiatives, and optimize our engineering processes. You will also take ownership of technological initiatives, from management and execution to solution design and progress reporting. In addition, you will serve as a lead interviewer, mentor other engineers, and lead incident responses.

Your role will also involve designing, building, and deploying server application code, implementing secure coding standards, and meeting sprint goals. You will monitor the performance of our server application, participate in the server ops on-call schedule, and work towards minimizing defects and improving reliability.

Travel for company offsites is expected at a minimum 2 times a year.

How You'll Make an Impact

• Identify opportunities to foster optimal product direction, collaborate closely with business stakeholders to streamline and simplify designs, and proactively identify areas of risk and tradeoffs that can be enhanced.

• Ownership of technical initiatives, being accountable for the initiative's outcome, managing and executing the project, designing the solution and defining its requirements, reporting on the initiative's progress, and coordinating resources.

• Perform as a lead technical interviewer

• Lead technical reviewer of Empower Engineering blog posts

• Mentor Engineers up to and including Senior levels

• Lead SEV1 and lower incident response through to resolution

• Lead engineering of large scale and complex product initiatives

• Culture leader across the engineering organization, delivery team and platform team

Why You're a Great Fit

• Minimum 10 years, ideally 15+ years developing web APIs within .NET (C#)

• Working experience with ORMs such as Entity Framework

• Working experience constructing and optimising RDMS queries

• Working experience within the asynchronous programming model

• General knowledge of Messaging Queues eg. AMQP

• General knowledge of PaaS environments eg. Azure

• Able to effectively leverage AI-powered development tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment, Factory) to enhance productivity, code quality, and collaboration.

Don't meet every qualification? If you're excited about this challenge and driven to innovate, we still want to hear from you!

What You'll Get at Empower

• Meaningful Ownership: Competitive salary and generous equity in a profitable, fast growing company.

• Complete Support: 100% coverage for medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, plus a generous WFH reimbursement.

• High-Impact Teams: The chance to thrive in a small, focused team where your contributions directly shape outcomes for our business and customers.

• Remote First: A virtual first environment built on trust and outcomes.

• Team Connection: Twice-yearly company onsites where we come together to connect, learn, and build for the future (our last few have been in San Diego, Vail, and Flagstaff)!

• Growth Path: Ongoing opportunities for development in a dynamic, supportive, and creative environment.

The Empower Way

The Empower Way is one where bold ambition meets an owner mindset, where open dialogue and spirited debate are encouraged, and where everyone works together to put our customers first. We believe diverse voices lead to the best ideas, and we foster an environment where every individual is valued, heard, and supported as part of one unified team working to change lives and build a more inclusive future.

If that sounds like you, join us and be part of a team that's helping millions of people reshape their financial futures.