Staff Engineer, Backend

Betterment
Betterment HQ - New York City$210k – $245kPosted 24 February 2026

Job Description

<div class="content-intro"><h2><strong>About Betterment</strong></h2> <p><a href="http://www.betterment.com/">Betterment</a> is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission, <strong>to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease</strong>. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (Four days/ week in-office).</p></div><h2> </h2> <h2><strong>About the role</strong></h2> <p>Broker Dealer is the core of the Betterment platform. On a busy day, we securely move millions of dollars through the Betterment system and ensure each transaction flows through a complex series of risk checks for strict regulatory compliance. Every ounce of efficiency and intelligence we pour into this system translates into more value for our customers. We’re looking for engineers to help us answer some of our most difficult backend scaling, software design, and optimization questions. As a Staff Engineer in our Broker Dealer organization, you'll help define our technical vision, improve system stability, drive on-time delivery, mentor our team of amazing engineers, and help scale our systems in the next chapter of our growth.</p> <p>This role is based out of our NYC office. For jobs based out of our NYC HQ, we require in office attendance Monday through Thursday, weekly. Below we've reflected the base salary range we would offer for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. </p> <ul> <li>New York City: $210,000 - $245,000</li> </ul> <p>We offer a competitive equity package, health, dental and vision benefits, life and ADD, short-term and long-term disability insurance, EAP, commuter and parking benefits FSA/HSA, and 401(k) with employer match as well as a flexible PTO policy. This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus. For jobs based out of our NYC HQ, we require in office attendance Monday through Thursday, weekly.</p> <h2><strong>A day in the life</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Drive the technical vision and long-term strategy of the team</li> <li>Build innovative trading and money-movement technology that empowers people to make the most of their money, so they can live better</li> <li>Solve “impossible” problems. Take your ideas to the next level right away. We experiment, iterate, learn, and repeat</li> <li>Collaborate with purpose. Spread knowledge across the organization, leveling up engineering practices and mentoring other engineers</li> <li>Gain trust through transparency. We believe in taking the guesswork out of investing. That means a consistent experience for our customers — you’ll build the tools to make it possible</li> <li>Create efficiency. Our software helps customers save time and money. We maintain it through clean code, pragmatic programming, and lean engineering</li> <li>Work with people who care. Half of our team is made up of engineers but we believe everyone at Betterment is an engineer with their own tools. We’re a group of talented professionals who pride ourselves on what we do. We’re smart, innovative, energetic, and lots of fun</li> </ul> <h2> </h2> <h2><strong>What we’re looking for</strong></h2> <ul> <li>10+ years professional experience in at least one object-oriented language, strong plus for Java experience</li> <li>7+ years professional experience with SQL and relational databases, including designing schemas and writing detailed SQL queries</li> <li>A strong command of fundamental algorithms and data structures</li> <li>Experience scaling and optimizing in large-scale distributed systems</li> <li>Experience designing, build ... (truncated, view full listing at source)