Staff Full Stack Software Engineer

About Betterment

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission: making people’s lives better. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (three days/ week in-office).

About the Role:

The Advisor Experience team aims to build the best full-service investment management platform in the industry. The team operates as part of Betterment Advisor Solutions, the all-in-one custodial platform for independent RIAs, and this team focuses on empowering financial advisors with the tools to manage their clients on Betterment’s platform. Our team holds a high amount of pride in building high-quality user experiences to simplify complex needs. We’re looking for a technical leader to drive this team forward while upholding high standards in quality and execution for Core Registered Investment Advisors managing their clients on Betterment’s platform. We also support our advisor support team and relationship managers.

As a Staff Engineer, you’ll play an instrumental role in designing and implementing complex systems within the team’s domain, guiding your team’s full stack development practices and collaborating with other senior engineering leaders to advance Betterment’s technology and create high performance, reliability and exceptional developer experience.

If you're passionate about delightful customer experiences, building scalable, high-performance web applications and are eager to work in a collaborative, forward-thinking environment, we'd love to have you on our team.

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: $190,000 - $220,000

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. For jobs based out of our NYC HQ, we require in office attendance Tuesday through Thursday, weekly.

A Day in the Life:

• Build things people love. Our goal is to delight our customers whenever possible. Sleek design, simple user experience, and access to sophisticated advice.


• Teach and Learn. As a Staff Engineer, we expect you to share your knowledge with new, junior, and senior engineers. Help mentor and grow our team professionally as well as learn from our leaders to level up your own talents.


• Solve “impossible” problems. Take your ideas to the next level right away. We experiment, iterate, learn, and repeat.


• Collaborate, with purpose. You’ll work in small groups with other talented thinkers and figure out how to make Betterment’s revolutionary software even better.


• Gain trust through transparency. We believe in taking the guesswork out of investing. That means a consistent experience for our customers — you’ll build the tools to make it possible. We already have the best UX in the business. Let’s make it even better.


• Create efficiency. Our software helps customers save time and money. We maintain it through clean code, pragmatic programming, and lean engineering.


• Work with people who care. Half of our team is made up of engineers, but we believe everyone at Betterment is an engineer with their own tools. We’re a group of talented professionals who pride ourselves on what we do. We’re smart, innovative, energetic, and lots of fun.

What We’re Looking For:

• Have proven and recent experience scoping, building, and leading technical projects (and the teams building them) from discovery through release


• Have experience in at least one server-side language - Ruby, Java, C#, C++, Python. (we use Ruby on Rails)


• Have experience building interactive web applications using modern Javascript frameworks (we use React)


• Have a strong understanding of appropriate technical design, architecture, and other complexity in building web applications


• Have experience gathering inputs, building consensus, and making technical decisions in an inclusive manner


• Have experience communicating effectively with technical and non-technical colleagues across different roles, teams, and lines of business


• Have a commitment to upskilling teammates through feedback, pairing, and mentorship


• Have a passion for software engineering, and for creating what doesn’t exist


• Know how to make the tradeoffs required to ship without compromising quality


• Realize that automated tests are a worthwhile investment


• Appreciate agility and pragmatism in software development


• Thrive in a startup environment

What being at Betterment means for you

We change lives

Join a community of innovators working to transform financial outcomes for real people. Your work will make an impact, always laddering up to our mission: making people's lives better.

We set audacious goals

We set them for the company, our customers, and ourselves—and we won’t stop until we reach them. We don’t just show up; we give our all, then celebrate our wins.

We value all perspectives

When we collaborate, we're at our best. We believe diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes and strive to uphold our supportive and inclusive community.

We invest in you with:

• A competitive suite of benefits, including: medical, dental, and vision insurance; life and AD&D insurance; STD and LTD benefits, including infertility support and World Professional Association for Transgender Health approved benefits; and generous parental leave.


• Flexible paid time off (and encouragement to use it!)


• Meaningful opportunity for community building through our 7 Employee Resource Groups


• Empowerment to own and lead change and affect the business


• Dedicated professional development opportunities


• Lunch from our in-house chef three days a week at our NYC headquarters

What happens next

We’ll take a few weeks to review all applications. If we’d like to spend more time with you, we’ll reach out to arrange next steps, which will include 3-4 sets of meetings with your future colleagues.

In the interview process, we’ll look to learn more about your skills, experiences, capabilities, and motivators. Many of our questions will be aimed at understanding how you might operate here at Betterment. Depending on the role, we may ask you to complete a case study exercise or technical assessments, as we want to collect a robust set of data points to better inform our decisions.

On average, it takes us around 3-5 weeks to make a hiring decision, depending on your availability and sense of urgency. As a best practice, we aim to interview at least 2-3 final round candidates before making a hiring decision. Please note that, as we usually receive an overwhelming number of applications for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the interview process.

We recognize that interviewing for a new role is a big deal. We appreciate you considering Betterment as the next step in your career, and our Recruiting Team is here to support and advocate for you through the interview process!

Betterment is dedicated to providing accommodations to candidates upon request. If you need accommodations at any point throughout the interview process, please reach out to your recruiter.

Please note that in any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Come join us!

We’re an equal opportunity employer and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. We strictly prohibit and do not tolerate discrimination against employees, applicants, or any other covered persons because of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex, gender (including gender nonconformity and status as a transgender or transsexual individual), sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, past, current or prospective service in the uniformed services, predisposing genetic characteristic, domestic violence victim status, arrest records, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state or local law.

E-Verify Statement

Betterment participates in E-Verify. We will provide the Social Security Administration, and if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization. Please note that we do not use this information to pre-screen job applicants.
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CPRA Language - CA Applicants ONLY

We collect and store personal information for the purposes of candidate tracking (for this role and future opportunities). The information you provide in the course of completing your application will be kept for up to 24 months. We use tools provided by third-party service providers but do not share candidate information for any purpose other than for recruiting. To access the data that is collected, request deletion or to make updates to your candidate profile, please email [email protected] .