About the role

Our Staff Engineers are technical leaders who provide expertise in software architecture and mentorship to teams that focus on specific domains. They shape and maintain engineering standards and best practices, and lead our internal engineering communities. They are self-led and able to tackle complex technical challenges that have a significant impact on the company's strategic initiatives.

The team you are joining is transitioning to Operations Software (OpsSoft). Through automation and product deployment, their objective is to improve the operational efficiency of internal teams (such as Support, Operations, Engineering) and to enhance risk and fraud controls across Betterment's business. They build and maintain application features, reusable libraries, and cli tools, primarily in Ruby on Rails, so having or quickly developing high competency with those technologies within three months is required.

Joining this team will require leadership, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, and an ability to influence without authority.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range we would offer 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: $175,000 - $205,000

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.

A day in the life

The following example is intended to provide a general sense of what an average day in the life of a Staff Engineer. This example is not meant to be prescriptive since daily routines can vary greatly.

• Review notifications and greet colleagues in Slack, then check emails and messages across various platforms (e.g., google, confluence, datadog, sentry, asana, github, etc.)
• Attend a working group sync on improving on-call procedures, and volunteer to analyze the source code to determine the cause of on-call incidents
• Pair program with an engineer on extending the lock and suspension engine you designed, asking open-ended questions to guide them towards a better solution
• Take a break to read, write, chat, review code, or grab a cup of coffee before your next meeting
• Partner with your director to help drive innovation and focus for the organization
• Code, read, write, chat, pr reviews, zoom
• Conduct a Systems Design interview for a candidate and provide feedback to the Hiring Manager
• Attend a Post Mortem and volunteer to take an action item to query logs in Sentry and Datadog from the previous week to help prevent future outages
• Meet with your manager to review the roadmap, discuss upcoming projects, and provide feedback on the pair programming session you had earlier with a\n engineer on the team.

What we’re looking for

Staff Engineers are expected to be technical leaders. While they don’t manage people directly, they spend a significant amount of their time leading teams and projects.

They should have experience in coordinating across teams, leading projects, mentoring and delegating responsibility to junior and senior engineers, making significant technical decisions, and driving technical strategy.

Successful candidates will have the following:

• 5+ years leadership experience within an engineering team, having served in a tech lead, managerial role, or both
• 7+ years of full-stack web development experience (Rails, Spring, Node, Django, React, Angular, etc.)
• High emotional intelligence, dedication to ongoing leadership development, and proven experience implementing and adhering to Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) principles
• A history of successfully managing complex projects that involve multiple teams, departments, or stakeholders to deliver a large-scale project
• An ability to delegate, provide guidance, knowledge, and feedback to engineers to help them develop new skills, achieve their goals, and grow as leaders
• An ability to take calculated risks and think outside the box in pursuit of innovative ideas, new technologies (e.g., ML/AI, chatbots), and approaches to problem-solving
• An ability to participate in leadership meetings that refine and execute on the vision and strategy of a 50 person engineering organization
• An ability to make difficult prioritization decisions, while still ensuring that the software is thoroughly tested and meets our quality standards
• Experience using tests, monitors, alerts, dashboards, and split tests to ensure software meets high standards for quality, reliability, and accuracy
• Experience with Agile methodologies (e.g., Kanban, Scrum, Scrumban) and leading team ceremonies
• Comfort communicating work or interests by writing technical articles, educational materials, or presenting at town halls or meetups