Staff Backend Software Engineer
EMPOWER OVERVIEW
Empower is a high-growth financial technology company on a mission to expand access to fair credit to give anyone in the world the opportunity to improve their financial security and mobility. We dream up and launch one-of-a-kind features that help our members get money instantly whenever they need it, save for the future, and rewrite their financial story. Our members see Empower Cash Advance as a life-saver, Empower Automatic Savings as a game-changer, and the new Empower Thrive line of credit (currently in beta, launching soon) as a lifeline to low-cost borrowing and the only practical path to building good credit.
Empower is backed by Sequoia Capital, Blisce, and Icon Ventures. Are we the next great place to grow your impact and accelerate your career? We think so:
Inc. ranked Empower #56 in the 2023 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US (#55 in 2022). Forbes put Empower on its 2023 list of America's Best Startup Employers. Fast Company recognized the new Empower Thrive line of credit in their 2022 list of the Next Big Things in Tech.
THE EMPOWER WAY
Great Expectations: We come up with bold, audacious goals for ourselves and go all out for impact
Owner Mindset: We give every employee latitude to act independently, make smart choices, and move the business forward
Spirited Debate: We love skeptics and seek counter opinions to challenge our personal assumptions and expand our view
Customer Obsession: We listen to understand, empathize, and create a memorable, rewarding experience for our community
Inclusive Collaboration: We believe diverse teams make the best decisions, and we strive to give diverse voices a seat at the table
No Jerks Allowed: We value our relationships and take the time to build trust and connection and communicate respectfully
WHAT EMPOWER OFFERS
Competitive salary
Generous equity package
Full healthcare and dental benefits
Technology expense reimbursement
Work from anywhere
JOB DESCRIPTION
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.
Key Responsibilities
- 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
Candidate Qualifications
- 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
At Empower, we hire for people that push themselves to understand others and seek out ways to challenge their personal assumptions. Our hope is that by fostering such an environment, we strengthen our business and relationships by putting people first. We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workspace where everyone (regardless of age, education, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any personal characteristics) feels like they belong. Even if your experience doesn’t exactly match up to our job description, you should feel empowered to apply regardless!