Staff Engineer, User Trust

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing, savings 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, to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (four days/ week in-office, with no required office days during the summer and winter holidays).

On User Trust, you’ll build the systems and experiences that help users, partners, and regulators trust Betterment’s platform. You’ll work on critical capabilities spanning, user privacy and compliance, account access, KYC, risk scoring, login and account recovery, and fraud prevention. 

This role sits at the intersection of security, legal & compliance, risk, and product engineering to deliver scalable, reliable solutions that protect customers, reduce fraud, and support Betterment’s regulatory obligations.

As a staff engineer, you’ll play an instrumental role in designing and implementing complex systems within the team’s domain, guiding your team’s full stack development practices and collaborating with other senior engineering leaders to advance Betterment’s technology and create high performance, reliability and exceptional developer experience.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range 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. 

• New York City: $200,000 - $238,000

This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus.

• Experience designing, building, and operating systems for fraud detection, prevention, or risk mitigation in high-trust environments.
• Familiarity with building customer-facing and internal tools that require strong reliability, auditability, and thoughtful handling of risk.
• Exposure to domains involving identity, access, privacy, compliance, financial workflows, or other trust-critical user experiences.
• Track record of balancing user experience, business goals, and control frameworks when building scalable fullstack systems.
• Have proven and recent experience scoping, building, and leading technical projects (and the teams building them) from discovery through release
• Have experience in at least one server-side language - Ruby, Java, C#, C++, Python. (we use Ruby on Rails)
• Have experience building interactive web applications using modern Javascript frameworks (we use React)
• Have a strong understanding of appropriate technical design, architecture, and other complexity in building web applications
• Have experience gathering inputs, building consensus, and making technical decisions in an inclusive manner
• Have experience communicating effectively with technical and non-technical colleagues across different roles, teams, and lines of business
• Have a commitment to upskilling teammates through feedback, pairing, and mentorship
• Have a passion for software engineering, and for creating what doesn’t exist
• Know how to make the tradeoffs required to ship without compromising quality
• Realize that automated tests are a worthwhile investment
• Appreciate agility and pragmatism in software development
• Thrive in a startup environment

Be a part of a community of innovators working to transform financial outcomes for real people. Your work will make an impact, always laddering up to our mission; to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease.

We set them for the company, our customers, and ourselves, and we won’t stop until we reach them. We don’t just show up; we give our all, then celebrate our wins.

When we collaborate, we're at our best. We believe diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes and strive to uphold our supportive and inclusive community.

We’re financial services pioneers, always finding new ways to improve, optimize, and enhance. Constant improvement is in our DNA.

• We offer a competitive suite of benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage; life and AD&D insurance; short- and long-term disability; infertility support and WPATH-aligned transgender health benefits; an Employee Assistance Program (EAP); transit benefits and FSA and HSA options
• Ownership: Equity for all employees, including new hire and refresher grants.
• Time: Flexible paid time off, paid parental leave, and a fully paid four-week sabbatical in your sixth year.
• Growth: Company-paid professional coaching for all employees.
• Wealth: Day-one 401(k) match plus matching on qualified student loan payments.

We’ll take a few weeks to review all applications. If we’d like to spend more time with you, we’ll reach out to arrange next steps, which will include 3-4 sets of meetings with your future colleagues.

In the interview process, we’ll look to learn more about your skills, experiences, capabilities, and motivators. Many of our questions will be aimed at understanding how you might operate here at Betterment. Depending on the role, we may ask you to complete a case study exercise or technical assessments, as we want to collect a robust set of data points to better inform our decisions.

On average, it takes us around 3-5 weeks to make a hiring decision, depending on your availability and sense of urgency. As a best practice, we aim to interview at least 2-3 final round candidates before making a hiring decision. Please note that, as we usually receive an overwhelming number of  applications for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the interview process. 

We recognize that interviewing for a new role is a big deal. We appreciate you considering Betterment as the next step in your career, and our Recruiting Team is here to support and advocate for you through the interview process!

Betterment is dedicated to providing accommodations to candidates upon request. If you need accommodations at any point throughout the interview process, please reach out to your recruiter. 

Please note that in any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

We’re an equal opportunity employer and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. We strictly prohibit and do not tolerate discrimination against employees, applicants, or any other covered persons because of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex, gender (including gender nonconformity and status as a transgender or transsexual individual), sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, past, current or prospective service in the uniformed services, predisposing genetic characteristic, domestic violence victim status, arrest records, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state or local law.