# Staff Engineer, Backend

**Company:** [Betterment](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/betterment)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $210k – $245k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** Java, SQL, Relational Databases, Algorithms, Data Structures, Distributed Systems, Backend Development, System Design, Scaling, Testing
**Posted:** 2026-02-11

> Staff Backend Engineer builds and scales trading/money-movement systems for Broker Dealer platform, ensuring regulatory compliance and efficiency. Requires 10+ years experience with Java/SQL, distributed systems, and technical leadership.

## Job Description

## A day in the life
- Drive the technical vision and long-term strategy of the team
- Build innovative trading and money-movement technology that empowers people to make the most of their money, so they can live better
- Solve “impossible” problems. Take your ideas to the next level right away. We experiment, iterate, learn, and repeat
- Collaborate with purpose. Spread knowledge across the organization, leveling up engineering practices and mentoring other engineers
- 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
- Create efficiency. Our software helps customers save time and money. We maintain it through clean code, pragmatic programming, and lean engineering
- 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

## What we’re looking for
- 10+ years professional experience in at least one object-oriented language, strong plus for Java experience
- 7+ years professional experience with SQL and relational databases, including designing schemas and writing detailed SQL queries
- A strong command of fundamental algorithms and data structures
- Experience scaling and optimizing in large-scale distributed systems
- Experience designing, building, scaling, and maintaining core backend software components
- Proven ability to lead and manage projects that span one or more teams, considering tradeoffs to ensuring on-time delivery while maintaining high standards of quality, performance and security
- An understanding of how to make the tradeoffs required to ship without compromising quality
- Knowing that investments in developing solid tests pays for itself several times over
- Appreciation for agility and pragmatism in software development

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4496a53b-0b89-444d-9f1d-b6ee7412be88
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4496a53b-0b89-444d-9f1d-b6ee7412be88