Senior/Staff Founding NYC Software Engineer, Equi

• Equi is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Senior or Staff Software Engineer with a strong product orientation and a drive to deliver impactful solutions
• This position demands a blend of technical expertise across the stack and a keen understanding of user needs and business goals
• We are looking for candidates who possess a strong blend of technical depth, product intuition, and a proactive mindset
• Experience: Minimum of 5 years (for Senior) or 8+ years (for Staff) of professional experience in software development, demonstrating progressive responsibility and impact
• Full-Stack Proficiency: Proven track record of designing, building, deploying, operating, and maintaining complex full-stack web applications in production environments
• Backend Expertise: Strong proficiency in TypeScript/Python and experience with web frameworks. Deep understanding of relational database systems, specifically Postgres, including data modeling and query optimization. Experience designing, building, and consuming APIs, with specific experience in GraphQL
• Frontend Expertise: Strong proficiency with modern JavaScript frameworks, specifically Next.js. Proven ability to build sophisticated, responsive, and performant user interfaces
• Data & Cloud Foundation: Solid understanding of data pipeline concepts (ETL/ELT) and data warehousing principles. Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), particularly BigQuery, and familiarity with related data services. Experience with containerization technologies, specifically Docker
• Product Acumen: Demonstrated ability to think critically about product strategy, understand user needs and pain points, and effectively translate them into technical solutions. Experience making pragmatic tradeoffs between technical complexity, user experience, and business value
• Autonomy & Action Orientation: Proven ability to work independently with minimal supervision, navigate ambiguity effectively, take initiative, make sound decisions quickly, and drive projects to completion with a strong sense of ownership and a bias for action
• Collaboration & Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. Strong collaborative spirit and experience working effectively within cross-functional teams
• Emerging Technology & Tooling: Has a finger on the pulse of software engineering and continues to sharpen their skills with emerging technology. Is competent in emerging and AI-driven engineering workflows and has a demonstrated ability to use them to drive efficiency and production
• We value engineers who look beyond the code to understand the bigger picture. A product-minded engineer at Equi is deeply curious about the 'why' – why are we building this feature? Who is it for? What problem does it solve? They actively engage with product managers and designers, offering thoughtful suggestions, challenging assumptions constructively, and proposing alternative approaches based on their technical insight and understanding of user needs
• They excel at evaluating the tradeoffs between engineering effort and product impact, often leveraging data to support their perspectives, ensuring we build not just functional, but truly valuable solutions
• Trust is fundamental to our engineering culture, and we empower our engineers with significant autonomy. High autonomy at Equi means having the freedom to determine the best way to tackle complex problems and execute tasks within the scope of agreed-upon goals
• Engineers who thrive here are self-starters, comfortable navigating ambiguity, proactively seeking information, and taking ownership of their work from end-to-end. This freedom comes paired with accountability; our engineers own their decisions and outcomes, learning and adapting from both successes and setbacks in a psychologically safe environment
• In the fast-paced world of fintech, speed and decisiveness matter. A bias toward action at Equi means valuing progress and learning through doing, rather than getting stalled by over-analysis or the pursuit of unattainable perfection
• Engineers with this trait are adept at making calculated decisions, even with incomplete information, understanding that many choices are reversible and that iteration leads to better results
• They proactively identify and remove roadblocks, break down large problems into manageable steps, readily experiment, and use feedback to adjust course quickly, ensuring we continuously deliver value to our customers
• This proactive approach, enabled by autonomy and guided by a product mindset, is key to our innovation cycle

Desirable

• This role presents an opportunity to operate at the intersection of data engineering and product development
• The successful candidate will be instrumental in both strengthening the foundations of our data infrastructure – enhancing core data pipelines and internal tools – and in pioneering the future of our customer-facing applications
• Engineers in this role operate with significant autonomy, taking ownership of complex projects from ideation through to execution and iteration
• They make critical technical decisions, architect scalable solutions, and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams (Investment Team, Sales, Operations) to bring innovative financial products and features to life
• This is a chance to have a broad impact, tackle diverse technical challenges, and contribute significantly to a growing platform in the exciting fintech space
• This role encompasses a dynamic range of responsibilities, bridging critical data infrastructure with user-centric product innovation:
• Design, develop, test, deploy, maintain, and enhance robust and scalable data pipelines and ETL/ELT processes, utilizing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services such as BigQuery, Airflow
• Continuously monitor and optimize data pipeline performance, focusing on scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency to handle growing data volumes
• Build, improve, and maintain essential internal tools, frameworks, and automation to enhance developer productivity, streamline operations, and improve system observability
• Implement rigorous data quality checks, validation processes, monitoring, alerting, and effective troubleshooting mechanisms to ensure data integrity and availability
• Collaborate proactively with data consumers, including analysts and business stakeholders, to understand their evolving data needs and ensure data is accessible, reliable, and effectively supports decision-making
• Engage actively throughout the entire product development lifecycle, contributing significantly to ideation, requirements definition (including identifying unmet needs), technical design, prototyping, implementation, testing, and successful launch
• Translate complex user needs and business requirements into well-architected, scalable, maintainable, and user-friendly full-stack applications using our technology stack (Typescript, Next.js, GraphQL, Python, Postgres, BigQuery)
• Design, implement, and maintain performant and reliable APIs and backend services, ensuring seamless data flow and integration (Python, GraphQL, Postgres)
• Develop intuitive, responsive, and accessible frontend interfaces that deliver exceptional user experiences (Typescript, Next.js)
• (Emphasis increases at Staff Level)
• Exercise a high degree of autonomy, taking full ownership of complex features, systems, or product areas from conception to post-launch iteration
• Collaborate effectively and communicate clearly with cross-functional partners in Product Management, Design, Operations, Data Science, and fellow engineers
• Lead or contribute significantly to technical decision-making, architectural design discussions, and the establishment and promotion of engineering best practices
• Proactively identify opportunities for process improvements, technology adoption, and innovation that enhance the product or engineering efficiency