Staff Engineer

Who We Are

Ellevest is a fast-growing, venture-backed financial services start-up built by women, for women. Our mission is to get more money in the hands of women, no matter where they’re starting or how far they’ve come. We started by building the only gender-aware online investing platform that takes totally un-ignorable realities (like pay gaps, different salary curves, and women’s longer lifespans) into account. Then we added banking, learning, and money and career coaching services for Ellevest members, plus a full-service private wealth management service that helps high net worth people, families, and institutions align their financial power with their values.

Ellevest was co-founded by Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck after she realized that the financial services industry was built by men, for men, systemically leaving women behind. During her Wall Street days, she served as CEO of Smith Barney, CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and CFO of Citi. Ellevest has raised $145 million from investors including Rethink Impact, Pivotal Ventures, Valerie Jarrett, Salesforce Ventures, PayPal Ventures, MasterCard, Khosla Ventures, Morningstar, and Venus Williams.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Ellevest is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity at our company. Data shows that diverse teams are more innovative, make better decisions, and lead to greater employee engagement. When hiring, we look for culture add, not culture fit. That means hiring people who bring new perspectives and different experiences to our team. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About This Position

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will assist in guiding the evolution of Ellevest’s technical architecture, tool selection, and process definition to support our rapidly growing business. You will de-risk technical projects by ensuring that our systems are secure, scalable, and compliant. You will partner with cross-functional stakeholders and Ellevest's leadership team to synthesize requirements and develop a robust technical roadmap and execution strategy. Most importantly, you will be an example for engineers at all levels: mentoring and leading with compassion, raising the bar on technical excellence, and delivering meaningful results with urgency.

We follow agile methodologies, and on a day-to-day basis, leverage Ruby on Rails, React, React Native, MySQL, Sidekiq, Docker, and CircleCI, among others. Our team tackles challenging technical problems, with a keen eye to scalability, security, compliance, and data integrity. Our systems run on a modern AWS stack supported by exciting new technologies, and our entire team works in a highly collaborative, flexible structure to build towards high-impact client facing outcomes.

Day-to-day you will:

• Develop a thorough understanding of Ellevest’s present and future business plans and work to align the technical architecture accordingly
• Be involved in company strategy discussions providing technical perspective on feasibility and opportunities to deliver business advantage
• Remain attuned to changes around the company and industry to anticipate and prevent obstacles from hindering team performance
• Define and effectively communicate a technical strategy that includes considerations for security, privacy, compliance, and data integrity
• Use negotiation, patience, and influence to solve problems with other senior leaders, ensuring progress and setting the example for others
• Lead large, strategic, complex projects; usually multi-person projects that cross team and discipline boundaries
• Lead the architecture review process for major changes or additions to the system architecture with an eye to scalability and stability
• Quickly analyze and resolve tactical issues across a wide variety of areas
• Participate in the software delivery process by designing, writing, and reviewing code
• Openly share knowledge and experience with engineers at all levels through mentorship, coaching, and formal training
• Participate in recruiting, thoroughly assess engineering candidates' technical experience and capabilities, and make recommendations for hiring

We’re looking for:

• At least 7 years professional software development experience with a strong track record of delivering sophisticated, real world systems
• Deep experience in one or more server-side languages such as Ruby, Python, Java, Scala, Go, C#, or C++
• Some exposure to web frontend technologies such as React, AngularJS, or VueJS
• Some exposure to mobile frontend technologies such as ReactNative, Swift, or Kotlin
• A strong command of object modeling and design patterns
• Experience designing and scaling distributed systems
• Experience utilizing cloud infrastructure such as AWS or GCP
• Proficient in component and deployment architecture
• Experience in finance, healthcare, commerce, logistics or other domains with significant backend complexity
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• A growth mindset approach to mentorship and a hunger to learn
• Passion for our women-oriented mission

Working at Ellevest

Ellevest was founded in New York City, but today, our fully remote team is spread across the whole United States. As a member of the team, you can expect to do work that directly impacts our mission and the lives of real women every day.

We’re also dedicated to building a work environment where everyone on our team can grow and thrive, with flexible working hours and time off; remote work policies designed for transparency and effective cross-team collaboration; ongoing team building and professional development; and more.

Do you think you could thrive in this role?

Please send us your application — even if you don’t check every single box. No two people’s career paths look exactly alike, and skill sets come in many different forms. We can’t wait to hear about yours.