Staff Backend Engineer, Altruist
$220-285k
3 days a week in office
All-in-one platform for financial advisors and their clients
Be an early applicant
All-in-one platform for financial advisors and their clients
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$220-285k
3 days a week in office
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible to everyone.
Role
Who you are
- Experience — 6+ years of software engineering experience building precise and scalable distributed systems with best engineering practices
- Full-stack with a backend lean (a plus) — You're primarily a backend engineer but comfortable working across the stack; a core engineering background is preferred over a purely product-focused one
- A track record of building, not just reviewing — You've shipped meaningful work in security, scale, or infrastructure. This is a builder role, not a Security/AppSec role: we're looking for engineers who own remediation and deliver hardened systems
- Education — Ideally looking for a B.A. / B.S. degree in relevant fields such as Computer Science or similar Engineering/Mathematics degrees
- Technical aptitude — You're technologically savvy and can easily get up to speed on modern tech stacks (Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, AWS, Postgres, Kubernetes). Strong Java + AWS is a great anchor
- Domain exposure (a plus) — Fintech, payments, or other security-sensitive, highly regulated environments
- Ownership — The pride you put into every aspect of your work is unparalleled and undeniable
- Superb communication — Intentional dialogue is a superpower. You listen as well as you share your perspective with others
- Resilience — We're inspired by your unwavering determination to achieve success, no matter the adversity you face along the way
- Assurance — Your confidence is brilliant, yet ego-less. You possess a strong knowledge base, the ability to discover the unknown, and are open to differing perspectives
- Creative problem solving — Identifying the problem is simply not enough. You're instinctually creative with your approach in finding solutions to roadblocks
- Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification
What the job involves
- Altruist is in the midst of an exceptional growth phase and we're excited to hire Staff Back End Engineers to join our growing Engineering organization
- We have multiple teams hiring for high impact & high visibility projects, with a particular focus on the security, scalability, and reliability of the platform our clients trust with their assets
- Our recruitment team will work with you to match you to the right opportunity to help you grow your career at Altruist
- Act as a leader and steward of engineering best practices, helping to mentor other engineers and develop impactful solutions
- Own systemic, cross-service problems end to end — from problem definition through design, implementation, and rollout
- Design, build, and harden identity and access management capabilities: authentication, authorization, RBAC, and OAuth/OIDC flows
- Strengthen our AWS and cloud infrastructure, including its security posture, configuration, and operational guardrails
- Improve database performance, security, and optimization across high-volume, transactional systems
- Harden APIs, services, and distributed systems against failure and abuse
- Drive production reliability: lead incident remediation, close out root causes, and build the observability needed to catch issues early
- Partner with our Security/CISO team to translate identified gaps into durable engineering solutions you design and ship
- Focus on building and scaling services and user-facing web applications that are customer-centric, performant, and secure
Our take
The world of wealth management is changing fast, and financial advisors are feeling the strain. Between managing client expectations, navigating complex regulations, and keeping up with endless admin tasks, there's little time left for what really matters - helping clients make smarter financial decisions.
And that's where Altruist comes in, with AI-powered solutions built to make it easier for advisors to manage portfolios, handle compliance and deliver great client experiences. Its AI assistant, Hazel, is able to take on the day-to-day tasks that slow advisors down (think note-taking, email drafting, and meeting summarising). It can also pull insights from firm data, emails, and documents to give personalized, context-aware answers to questions.
The company has faced some bumps in the road, notably laying off around 15% of its workforce in 2025. That said, this shift to focus on the most impactful parts of its business is not entirely negative. In fact, its plan to build an all-in-one custody and wealth platform driven by Hazel is coming faster than the company anticipated, with the CEO stating that it could make much of the advisor tech stack irrelevant by the end of the year.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
67% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Apr 2025
$152m
SERIES F
May 2024
$169m
SERIES E
Total funding: $601.5m
Company benefits
- Grow your career: Altruist is a thoughtful, fast-growing company that values high achievers
- Our success is your success: Be rewarded for doing great work - competitive compensation and equity for all team members
- Take care of yourself: Health, dental, and vision coverage, available on your first day
- Work-life integration: We work hard and respect everyone’s whole selves
- You're welcome here: Altruist is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We’re committed to inclusivity
Company HQ
McManus, Culver City, CA
Leadership
Jason Wenk
(Founder & CEO)Began their career as a Morgan Stanley System Analyst before co-founding Retirement Wealth as CEO in 2005. They also founded FormulaFolios in September 2011, before combining this financial and entrepreneurial experience to found Altruist in September 2018.
Mazi Bahadori
(COO/CCO)Mazi joined Altruist in 2019 as CCO and VP of Securities, adding COO to his title in 2023. Prior to this, he served as the CCO and Director of Operations at Aspiration and as the VP and Legal & Compliance Specialist at PIMCO.
Harpreet Ahluwalia
(CPO)Harpreet joined Altruist in 2019 as VP of Product Management, becoming CPO in 2022. Prior to this, he was a VP of Product Management at ServiceTitan for 4 years and Head of Product at Citysearch for 3 years.
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