Senior Backend Engineer
Company: Cushion
Location: San Francisco, California
Salary: $160,000 - $200,000
Posted on: June 4, 2024
Job Description
Cushion is a venture-backed fintech startup changing how consumers pay their
bills. We’re building a bill-pay platform for the 2020s and beyond and looking
for a driven Senior Backend Engineer to join us.
—
The world of consumer bills has transformed rapidly over the past few years
and is now more complicated than ever.
One of the most significant contributors to this complexity is the explosive
adoption of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) - think Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm, etc. -
which has led to consumers juggling dozens of additional payments each month
on top of their bills, utilities, and subscriptions.
As a result, tens of millions of Americans are struggling financially, often
missing payments, incurring unnecessary fees and penalties, and harming their
credit scores.
There is a critical gap between the world of bills consumers live in today and
the tools they need to successfully manage their bills and finances.
Enter Cushion.
We spent the past three years building a one-stop shop where consumers can
manage, pay, and build credit with their bills, subscriptions, and Buy Now Pay
Later (BNPL) payments. Since launch, we’ve quickly become the go-to bill-pay
method for our users, now processing over $1.5M in transactions each month.
What makes Cushion different from the other personal finance apps on the
market is our relentless focus on **innovation**. Instead of spending cycles
building undifferentiated features, we focus on what’s missing:
* Before switching our focus to bill-pay, we were the **1st company to automate bank fee negotiation**
* We are the **only company that has layered consumers ' BNPL loan schedules into their monthly budgets** alongside their recurring bills, utilities, and subscriptions
* We built a one-of-a-kind calendar sync that **automatically streams due dates and bill statuses to the user’s favorite calendar**
* Instead of limiting our scope to historical transaction data like most fintechs, we go beyond the status quo, tapping unique data sources to provide a more holistic, **forward-looking view of consumers’ finances**
As a Senior Backend Engineer at Cushion, you will contribute to our culture of
innovation starting on day 1. You will work on a variety of projects ranging
from establishing and maintaining connections to essential third-party vendors
to architecting and implementing secure and scalable money movement through
our systems, and everything in between.
You will work with an incredibly talented team comprised of folks from
Twitter, Credit Karma, Block, TD Bank, and Bill.com, as well as a team of PhDs
focused on Machine Learning. We’ve raised $21M since 2016 from notable
investors like [Rose Park](https://www.roseparkadvisors.com/), [Flourish
Ventures](https://flourishventures.com/), [Vestigo
Ventures](https://www.vestigoventures.com/), [Afore
Capital](https://www.afore.vc/), [TSEF](https://www.maycombcapital.com/the-
social-entrepreneurs-fund/), [500 Startups](https://500.co/), and the founders
of companies like NerdWallet, Earnest, and Vouch.
This is a rare opportunity to help shape the strategy, product, and culture
alongside the Founder and core team.
Remote available, with preference for San Francisco area candidates looking to
work in-person 2-3 days per week.
**About you**
* You’re excited to work at a small and nimble venture-backed startup
* You’re a self-starter who wants to move fast and has a bias toward making things happen
* You're comfortable being uncomfortable and can navigate your way through ambiguous situations
* You have no interest in being a background character and want to be at the forefront of pushing the company forward
* You're data-driven in your approach and measure the magnitude of the problem as well as the impact of the solution
* You're fearless in the face of adversity
* You have an insatiable desire to learn, expand your skills, and grow (both yourself and the company)
**What you’ll be doing**
* Work directly with our founder, product managers, and engineering team to build an innovative bill-pay platform
* Write high-quality code that scales to the needs of our platform and users
* Design, build, and maintain the backend of our bill pay platform
* Design, build, and maintain SQL databases
* Build and maintain important third-party integrations, including bank connectivity and payments execution
* Enhance our dev ops stack and workflows
* Enhance and maintain AWS infrastructure
* Improve engineering standards, tooling, and processes
* Be expected to balance immediate business impact with scalability and/or long-term considerations
* Consistently execute on your deliverables in a timely manner
* Surface blockers that inhibit the pace of development
* Fearlessly take on projects across the stack
* Operate with a sense of urgency
**Your background**
* A college degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Math, or Physics
* 5+ years of full-time Software Engineering experience after getting your undergraduate degree
* Experience with Python (experience with Django is a plus)
* Experience with relational databases and SQL
* Experience deploying and scaling applications on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc
* Experience with web technologies: Javascript and CSS. React knowledge is a plus
* Bonus: Startup experience
* Bonus: Experience working at a FinTech or financial institution
* Bonus: Payments or consumer lending experience
**Perks**
* Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contribution
* Unlimited vacation and sick days
* Brand new Apple laptop
* Competitive salary because we value the best people and talent
* Meaningful equity in an innovative, venture-backed company
* Generous parental leave
If you feel like you have what it takes to thrive in a challenging fast-paced
environment with an ambitious team that is changing the way $4 Trillion worth
of bills get paid in America each year, please drop us a line!
Cushion focuses on Payments, Artificial Intelligence, Personal Finance,
Consumer Lending, and Fin Tech. Their company has offices in San Francisco and
Remote. They have a small team that's between 11-50 employees. To date,
Cushion has raised $21.3M of funding; their latest round was closed on April
2022.
You can view their website at <https://cushion.ai> or find them on
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/cushion_ai),
[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/cushionai/),
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cushion), and [Product
Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cushion-5).