Staff Software Engineer (Seattle)

Felix; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary range: 200k-250k USD

Stock options

Annual performance bonus

Health, dental, and vision plans

401(k) with employer matching

Hybrid working model

Learning opportunities

Unlimited PTO

Parental leave

Growth opportunities

Job summary

Félix is seeking a Staff Software Engineer on the Platform Core team to shape and optimize the foundational services powering our AI-driven remittance platform. You will ensure scalable, reliable systems that support rapid growth and cross-border payments.

The ideal candidate has 8+ years building distributed systems, strong backend skills (Python/Go/Java), and hands-on experience with GCP, Kubernetes, and CI/CD.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with distributed systems.
• Backend experience with Python, Go, or Java and REST/gRPC.
• Experience operating on Google Cloud Platform with Kubernetes, Terraform, and observability tools.

Responsibilities

• Architect & Build: design, build, and optimize foundational microservices and infrastructure.
• System Resilience: improve resilience with monitoring, retries, and automated recovery.
• Scalability & Performance: identify bottlenecks and ensure high availability during hyper-growth.
• Strategic Technical Leadership: set architectural vision for the platform across teams.
• Cross-Squad Collaboration: align on infra, API contracts, and event-driven standards.
• Mentorship & Talent Development: mentor senior/mid engineers and promote best practices.
• Fast-paced execution: translate requirements into production-ready code with speed and precision.

Skills

Python

Go

Java

REST APIs

gRPC

SQL/NoSQL

Distributed systems

GCP

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD

English

Tools

NewRelic

PagerDuty

Terraform

Cloud Run

Job description

About Us

At Félix, we're building the financial ecosystem for Latin immigrants in the U.S., starting with a revolution in remittances. Our core product is an AI-powered chatbot built on WhatsApp, allowing our users to send money home as easily as sending a text message. We leverage cutting‑edge technology like AI, blockchain, and stablecoins to make cross‑border payments faster, more affordable, and more accessible than ever before.

We are a hyper-growthSeries C company, backed by over $200 million in funding from top‑tier global investors, including QED, Castle Island, Switch Ventures, HTwenty, Monashees, and Andreessen Horowitz with support from General Catalyst Customer Value Fund. This isn't just about the numbers; it's a testament to the trust our investors have in our vision and our team. Additionally, Félix was selected as an “Endeavour Entrepreneur” and was a recipient of the CrossTech Fintech Startups Award. We are a group of extremely talented and dedicated high‑performers, united by our shared obsession with a single goal: empowering our customers. We are all owners of Félix, driven by a bias for action and a true experimentation spirit to get things done with urgency and focus.

Joining Félix means you will be part of a team building a legacy, a company that will outlive us all. This is a rare opportunity to apply your skills to a deeply meaningful mission—serving a community that has been underserved for too long. We are a team that is fiercely loyal to each other, where radical transparency and constructive feedback are how we grow and push for excellence. We are bold, we care less about what others are doing, and more about creating sustainable value and a product that truly makes our users' lives better. We are building the future, today.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Platform Core team, you will join a high-caliber group responsible for the foundational services and infrastructure that power Félix’s products. You will identify bottlenecks, improve system efficiency, and ensure that our services can support the company’s continued growth while maintaining a high level of availability.

This role requires balancing rapid execution with sound engineering principles. You will participate in the development of customer-facing and business-critical features in a fast-paced environment, ensuring that new functionality is delivered without compromising system stability or accumulating unnecessary technical debt. Success in this role requires curiosity, strong technical judgment, and the ability to think beyond individual components to deliver solutions that benefit the organization as a whole.

The ideal candidate is someone who enjoys solving complex distributed systems problems, takes ownership of outcomes, and is passionate about building systems that are scalable, reliable, and easy for other teams to build upon.

Technology Stack:

We are technology agnostic and value candidates with diverse backgrounds. While familiarity with the following is helpful, your willingness to learn and adapt is paramount.

• Front-end: React, HTTP, HTML/DOM, JavaScript, CSS, AJAX
• Back-end: Python, Flask/FastAPI, REST APIs, Redis, SQL, gRPC
• Cloud: Google Cloud services (Firestore, Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, Google Artifact Registry, Cloud Run, BigQuery, Cloud Composer, etc.)
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Terraform, NewRelic, PagerDuty

Responsibilities

• Architect & Build: Design, build, and optimize foundational microservices and infrastructure that power the company’s products.
• System Resilience: Improve the resilience of the platform by designing systems that gracefully handle failures. Implement monitoring and observability solutions, improve incident response processes, and build mechanisms such as retries, circuit breakers, fallbacks, and automated recovery strategies.
• Scalability & Performance: Identify bottlenecks, improve system efficiency, and ensure services support continued hyper-growth while maintaining high availability.
• Strategic Technical Leadership: Set the architectural vision for the platform. Understand how services interact, how data flows through the system, and how decisions made in one area impact the broader platform.
• Cross-Squad Collaboration: Work alongside other Staff Engineers across Payments, Disbursements, and GRC to align on shared infrastructure, API contracts, and event-driven standards.
• Mentorship & Talent Development: Mentor Senior and Mid-level engineers, championing best practices in system design, testing, domain-driven design, and engineering culture.
• Fast-paced execution: Thrive in an agile, high‑velocity environment, translating product requirements into production-ready code with speed and precision.

Requirements

These are the applicable requisites, although equivalent competencies in any of the above will also be considered.

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record in building and operating complex distributed systems.
• Expertise in backend technologies such as Python (preferred), Go, or Java, along with solid experience in REST APIs, gRPC, and SQL/NoSQL databases.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems principles, including idempotency, concurrency control, failure domains, and microservices architecture.
• Proven experience improving system resilience (circuit breakers, retries, fallbacks) and building robust observability/monitoring solutions.
• Experience operating distributed systems on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Terraform, or equivalent cloud-native stacks.
• Strong ability to navigate ambiguity, set architectural vision, and drive technical initiatives with company-wide impact.
• Strategic Influence: Ability to break down ambiguous business problems, communicate technical decisions to non-technical executives, and drive alignment across multiple teams.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver high-quality software rapidly in a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) environment.
• Fluent or advanced English.

What We Offer

• Salary range: 200k - 250k USD
• Initial stock options grant
• Annual performance bonus
• Health, dental, and vision plans
• 401(k) with employer matching
• Hybrid working model
• Continuous learning opportunities
• Unlimited PTO
• Paid parental leave
• Empowering opportunities for growth in a dynamic entrepreneurial environment

Equal Opportunity Employer

At Félix, we are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruitment, hiring, placement, promotion, training, compensation, benefits, and termination.

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