Senior Core Services Engineer

About the role

About Highnote

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an embedded finance company that sets the standard in modern card platform management. As an all-in-one card issuer processor and program management platform, we provide digital-first organizations with the flexibility to seamlessly issue and process payment cards, embed virtual and physical card payments, and integrate ledger and wallet functionalities—empowering businesses to drive growth and profitability.

We’ve raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 140+ employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we’ve managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 25+ US states.

Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we’re helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don’t exist yet.

We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we’re unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen.

Job Description

Core Services Team is responsible for building common application services and libraries, supporting application tooling needs and helping ensure the reliability, scalability and quality of the products.

What you’ll be doing

Building secure and compliant platform products that solve customer needs

Writing high quality and robustly tested code, mostly in Java

Understanding customer problems to build the right solutions

Documenting your work to support our rapidly-scaling company

Interfacing with a variety of the company’s domains to strengthen our platform

What we are looking for

12+ years experience building production software systems

A history of writing scalable, performant and maintainable code. We strongly believe languages can be learned and care more about your engineering skill over frameworks

Experience building out common platform libraries such as logging, configuration, encryption, async etc

Experience with Java, Spring Boot/Spring Framework, GCP services, and understanding of OAuth

Proficiency using AI-powered development tools (e.g., Claude Code) across the full software development lifecycle - including design, prototyping, development, testing, and iteration. A demonstrated passion for AI-driven development, a commitment to continuously advancing AI skills, and a drive to push the boundaries of productivity and engineering outcomes.

Bonus skills

Agentic AI experience

Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS

Experience with Spring Boot, Docker, and Kubernetes

Knowledge of gRCP and Protobuf

Experience with distributed event system

Experience with software security

Experience with big data technologies such as BigQuery and RedShift

Experience with building data pipelines for search platform

A background in the fintech space

Why Highnote?

We’re a startup that allows for our employees to truly build from the ground up and impact every layer of our organization.

We’re a team of payments obsessed individuals. While some of us come from the fintech world, some of us don’t. We value the varied backgrounds and the diverse perspectives of our employees.

We’re small on hierarchy and big on growth. We’re a flat organization that allows everyone to have direct exposure to our leadership team. We are looking for builders who thrive in ambiguity.

We’re backed by Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures, Adams Street Partners, Westcap, and Pinegrove Venture Partners. Angel Investors include Bill Ready (CEO at Pinterest) and Renaud Laplanche (Co-Founder & CEO of Upgrade).

Highnote benefits

Flexible Paid Time Off

100% healthcare coverage + 75% coverage for dependents

401k program

Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks paid leave for the birth parent, and up to 6 weeks paid leave for the non-birth parent

Equity in Highnote

Stipend to build out your home office; internet reimbursement

At Highnote we have built a total rewards philosophy that includes fair, equitable, geo-based compensation that is performance and potential based. Our compensation packages are competitive based on robust market research and are a combination of a cash salary, equity, and benefits. In compliance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the annual salary range for applicants is $170,000-$230,000.

Please note that positions located in San Francisco are hybrid and include core working days of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in office. We provide flexible work options based on distance from our downtown SF office. Highnote believes in the power of face-to-face, personal connection. As a result, we prioritize in-person candidates.

Highnote is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people from all backgrounds and identities to apply. We do not discriminate based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by US federal state or local laws, or the laws of the country or jurisdiction where you work. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e.: she/her, he/him, they/them, etc).

Note on Recruitment Fraud: Highnote will never ask for payment, bank details, or interview candidates via text/chat apps. All official emails come from @highnote.com or Greenhouse.