Senior Software Engineer - Developer Platform

About the role

Who We Are

At Pave, we're building the industry’s leading compensation platform, combining the world's largest real-time compensation dataset with deep expertise in AI and machine learning. Our platform is perfecting the art and science of pay to give 8,500+ companies unparalleled confidence in every compensation decision.

Top tier companies like OpenAI, McDonald’s, Instacart, Atlassian, Synopsys, Stripe, Databricks, and Waymo use Pave, transforming every pay decision into a competitive advantage. $190+ billion in total compensation spend is managed in our workflows, and 80% of Forbes AI 50 use Pave to benchmark compensation.

The future of pay is real-time & predictive, and we’re making it happen right now. We’ve raised $160M in funding from leading investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Craft Ventures.

The Developer Platform Team @ Pave

The Developer Platform team sits at the heart of Pave Engineering. Our customers are Pave's own engineers. We treat developer experience as a product - the leverage layer that lets every team ship enterprise-grade software fast and reliably.

This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role where you'll help define how Pave builds software. As a senior engineer, you'll lead initiatives end to end, from CI/CD and observability standards to local development workflows and incident response. You'll also shape how AI-assisted and agentic workflows fit into Pave's development loop - from scaffolding to review to deploy. You'll partner closely with engineers across product and data to remove friction, boost developer velocity, and strengthen reliability. You'll own the metrics for developer velocity and reliability, and be accountable for moving them.

What You'll Bring

4+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or developer experience.

Solid understanding of cloud architecture (GCP or similar), with a sharp sense of the reliability and security tradeoffs that come with handling sensitive compensation data.

Strong debugging and systems thinking, with experience scaling production services.

Hands on with modern AI tooling - agentic coding, AI-assisted review/testing - with a clear-eyed view of where it does and doesn't help.

Experience with monorepo tooling and build systems - keeping builds fast and CI tractable as the codebase and team grow.

High developer empathy - you love improving workflows and helping others move faster.

Opinionated and pragmatic, with a genuine passion for engineering best practices and CI/CD craftsmanship: fast feedback loops, reliable pipelines, strong testing, safe progressive delivery.

Comfortable in a fast-paced startup environment, with a proven ability to lead large, ambiguous projects that land cross-team impact.

Some core technologies we build with include: TypeScript, Node.js, MySQL, Orbstack, Kubernetes, Terraform, Datadog, GitHub Actions, E2B, ClickHouse, and Incident.io.

Compensation, It's What We do.

Salary is just one component of Pave's total compensation package for employees. Your total rewards package at Pave will include equity, top-notch medical, dental, and vision coverage, an unlimited PTO policy, and many other region-specific benefits. Your level is based on our assessment of your interview performance and experience, which you can always ask the hiring manager about to understand in more detail. This salary range may include multiple levels.

The targeted cash compensation for this position is (level depends on experience and performance in the interview process) $195,500 - $264,500

Benefits @ Pave

At Pave, growth isn't a perk — it's the point. As you develop, your role expands, your responsibilities deepen, and your compensation reflects the impact you're making.

What we offer

Your Health, Fully Covered: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family, with a range of options designed to meet you where you are.

Time That's Actually Yours: Flexible PTO and the freedom to work from anywhere in the world for up to a month — because life doesn't pause, and neither should you.

Fuel for the Work: Lunch and dinner stipends plus fully stocked kitchens, so you can stay energized without thinking twice about it.

Room to Keep Growing: A quarterly education stipend to invest in the skills and knowledge that matter most to you.

Support When It Matters Most: Robust parental leave so you can be fully present for the moments that count.

Getting Here, Made Easier: A commuter stipend to support the in-person collaboration that makes great work happen.

Life @ Pave

Founded in 2019 with a clear purpose and a team that has never wavered from it, Pave has grown into a global force in compensation management — giving thousands of companies the tools to take control, build confidence, and earn credibility in every pay decision they make. And we're just getting started. Headquartered in San Francisco's Financial District, with regional hubs in New York City's Flatiron District, Salt Lake City, Kraków (Poland), and the United Kingdom — wherever you're based, you'll find the same thing: people who genuinely care about the work, each other, and the customers that rely on Pave.

We run a hybrid culture that brings teams together in person 3 to 4 days a week — and every Friday, the whole company gathers for our Team Sync: breakfast, new hire welcomes, product updates, fireside chats, and yes, the occasional Kahoot. It's one of the things people notice when they join us — that we truly enjoy spending time together.

Our culture is shaped by five values we live every day:

Be Intellectually Honest — Truth over comfort. We face reality clearly and speak directly, even when it's hard.

Play to Win — We're not here to participate. We're here to be the #1 compensation platform in the world, and we act like it.

Uphold the Pave Platinum Standard — We hold ourselves to the highest bar — for our customers, our data, and each other.

One Team — We win and lose together. Titles don't drive decisions here — shared goals do.

Hug of Jawn — Hard to define, impossible to miss. Ask your recruiter.

Our Vision: Unlock a labor market built on trust.

Our Mission: Build confidence in every compensation decision.

We build software that transforms how companies pay their people — and we believe the team behind that software deserves the same thoughtfulness. If you're ready to help shape the future of compensation alongside people who are smart, humble, and genuinely motivated by the problem we're solving, we'd love to meet you.

Still deliberating? Just apply! We're always excited to meet people who are eager to contribute.