Staff Engineer, User Engagement

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 Java script 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

We change lives

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 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…