**Who this is for** This role is for a seasoned Staff Engineer looking to lead technical strategy and development within a trust-focused domain. It is an ideal
Work type: hybrid
Location: Betterment HQ - New York City
Salary: $200,000 – $238,000/yr
Type: Full-time
**Who this is for** This role is for a seasoned Staff Engineer looking to lead technical strategy and development within a trust-focused domain. It is an ideal fit for someone experienced in balancing security, risk mitigation, and regulatory compliance with seamless, user-centric product experiences in the fintech space. **Key highlights** You will lead the design and implementation of systems critical to Betterment’s integrity, including fraud detection, identity verification, and account security. You will operate at the intersection of security, legal, and product engineering, driving architectural decisions while mentoring a high-performing engineering team in a collaborative, hybrid work environment. **You might be a good fit if you...** - Possess extensive experience designing systems for fraud detection, risk mitigation, or identity management in high-trust, regulated environments. - Have a proven track record of leading complex, full-stack technical projects from discovery through to release. - Maintain expert-level proficiency in server-side development (Ruby preferred) and modern JavaScript frameworks like React. - Demonstrate strong skills in cross-functional collaboration, technical consensus-building, and mentoring peers to elevate team quality.
## About Betterment
[Betterment](http://www.betterment.com/) 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).
## About the Role:
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.
If you're passionate about delightful customer experiences, building scalable, high-performance web applications and are eager to work in a collaborative, forward-thinking environment, we'd love to have you on our team.
New York City: $200,000 - $238,000
We offer a competitive equity package, health, dental and vision benefits, life and AD&D, 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.
## What We’re Looking For:
We change lives
Join a community of innovators working to transform financial outcomes for real people. Your work will make an impact, always laddering up to our mission: making people's lives better.
We set audacious goals
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.
We value all perspectives
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 invest in you with:
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.Come join us!
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.E-Verify Statement