Location: Palo Alto, CA (In-office, 5 days/week)
Compensation: $220,000–$300,000 base salary + equity (0.03%–0.05%)
Experience: 1–6 years
Employment Type: Full-Time
Visa Sponsorship: Available for qualified candidates

About the Company

The company is building the commerce infrastructure layer for the next generation of internet businesses.

Rather than relying on a single payment processor, the platform intelligently orchestrates multiple payment providers and payment methods, helping merchants increase successful transactions and revenue. Today, the platform processes billions of dollars in annual payment volume across more than 140 countries and continues to grow rapidly.

Backed by leading investors and fresh growth capital, the company is expanding globally while maintaining the speed, ownership, and ambition of an early-stage startup. Engineering remains lean, and technical decisions are made close to the people building the product. Engineers work directly with founders and have the opportunity to influence both the product and the business.

The Opportunity

The Payments team is one of the highest-impact teams in the company.

This team owns the systems, infrastructure, and products that directly influence transaction success, merchant revenue, and platform growth. Engineers are trusted to take ownership of meaningful business problems and solve them end-to-end—from architecture and implementation to product design and developer experience.

Despite the company's scale, the team remains intentionally small. As a result, engineers take on significant responsibility early and have the opportunity to make visible contributions from their first weeks on the job.

Three Ways to Succeed in This Role

We're hiring for the same core engineering role, but we've found exceptional candidates typically fall into one of three archetypes:

The Design-Minded Engineer

You care deeply about product quality and user experience. You notice when a flow feels clunky, when an interaction creates friction, or when a developer API could be more intuitive. You enjoy creating elegant experiences on top of complex systems.

You might be a fit if you:

• Have strong frontend and product instincts
• Care about developer experience as much as implementation details
• Think about usability, workflows, and customer outcomes
• Enjoy turning technical capabilities into intuitive products

The Systems Engineer

You love solving difficult technical problems and building reliable, scalable systems. You think in terms of architecture, infrastructure, performance, and long-term maintainability.

You might be a fit if you:

• Have a strong backend or infrastructure background
• Enjoy designing APIs, services, and distributed systems
• Care deeply about reliability and scalability
• Like tackling technically challenging problems with significant business impact

The Business-Minded Engineer

You think like an owner. You naturally connect technical decisions to customer outcomes, revenue, and business growth. You enjoy understanding how products create value and how engineering can accelerate that value.

You might be a fit if you:

• Think beyond implementation and into outcomes
• Enjoy working closely with founders and business leaders
• Use data to inform decisions
• Care about growth, conversion, and customer behaviour

What All Three Archetypes Have in Common

Regardless of your strengths, successful engineers here:

• Take ownership and execute independently
• Move quickly and ship frequently
• Have strong product judgment
• Thrive in fast-moving environments
• Enjoy taking ideas from zero to one
• Care deeply about outcomes, not just implementation

What You'll Own

• Improve and optimize payment experiences, processing billions in transaction volume
• Build payment features, APIs, SDKs, and developer tools used by businesses and developers
• Expand payment method coverage and global commerce capabilities
• Design and ship reliable systems that improve payment performance and merchant conversion
• Create developer-facing documentation, examples, and interactive tooling
• Build infrastructure that often becomes customer-facing product functionality
• Collaborate directly with founders and senior leadership on high-priority initiatives
• Deliver meaningful, visible work within your first weeks on the team

What We're Looking For

Engineering Excellence

We're less concerned with your specific tech stack and more interested in your ability to build, ship, and own meaningful systems.

For backend-focused engineers:

• Strong experience building and scaling production systems
• Deep understanding of APIs, infrastructure, data systems, or distributed systems
• Ruby on Rails experience is a plus, but not required

For frontend-focused engineers:

• Strong experience building high-quality web applications
• Experience with modern frontend frameworks such as Next.js
• Strong product and UX instincts

Builder Mentality

• Experience taking products or systems from zero to one
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and minimal process
• Self-directed and highly accountable
• Naturally identifies problems and drives solutions
• Strong product-engineering mindset

Technical Judgment

• Uses AI-assisted development tools effectively while maintaining strong engineering fundamentals
• Able to evaluate, validate, and improve AI-generated code
• Solves problems simply and pragmatically
• Makes thoughtful tradeoffs between speed, quality, and scalability

Ideal Background

Many successful candidates have been:

• Early engineers at high-growth startups
• Founders or former founders
• Builders who have launched products with measurable impact
• Engineers who have owned major initiatives end-to-end
• Individuals who have built meaningful side projects, businesses, or products outside of work

Bonus points for:

• Payments, fintech, or financial systems experience
• Developer platform or SDK experience
• Strong design sensibilities
• Experience building products used by other developers
• Understanding of online businesses, creators, and digital commerce
• Ruby on Rails experience

Who Thrives Here

You'll likely enjoy this environment if you:

• Want significantly more ownership than most companies can offer
• Prefer building over coordinating
• Enjoy moving quickly and shipping frequently
• Like working directly with founders and decision-makers
• Care about product outcomes as much as technical implementation
• Want to help shape a company during a period of rapid growth
• Are energized by ambitious goals and high standards

This is not an environment optimized for layers of management, extensive processes, or narrowly defined responsibilities. Engineers are trusted to identify opportunities, make decisions, and drive outcomes.

Location & Work Environment

• Based in Palo Alto, California
• In-office five days per week
• Fast-paced, highly collaborative environment
• Direct access to founders and senior leadership
• Opportunity to make an outsized impact on a rapidly growing business

Compensation & Benefits

Compensation

• Base salary: $220,000–$300,000
• Equity: 0.03%–0.05%
• Competitive overall compensation package

Benefits & Perks

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Unlimited PTO
• 401(k)
• Complimentary Equinox membership
• Company-paid lunch and dinner Monday through Friday
• Latest MacBook Pro and equipment setup
• Visa sponsorship available for qualified candidates

Why Join?

This is an opportunity to join a company that has already achieved significant scale while still operating with the urgency, ownership, and ambition of an earlier-stage startup.

If you're looking for a role where ownership is real, your work is visible, and your decisions directly influence company growth, we'd love to hear from you.