Senior Software Engineer, Lending

Chime
New York; San Francisco, US
On-site

Who this role is best for

Best suited to senior backend engineers with fintech experience who thrive in cross-team technical leadership roles.

Best fit for

  • Senior engineers who want influence beyond a single feature area
    — “own more than a single service or feature area
  • Backend specialists comfortable with high-stakes financial systems
    — “financial transactions that must be correct, resilient, and auditable
  • Technical leaders who bridge product and platform needs
    — “work at the seam between member-facing products and the platforms

Things to consider

  • On-call participation is required for incident response
    — “Participate in on-call and incident response
  • Expect frequent collaboration with non-engineering functions
    — “Partner closely with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations

How to stand out

  • Showcase cross-team initiative leadership in fintech contexts
    — “drive complex, cross-team initiatives from problem definition through architecture
  • Highlight specific examples of platform abstraction work
    — “turn one-off product needs into reusable platform capabilities
  • Demonstrate experience with financial system reconciliation patterns
    — “strong handling of failures, retries, reconciliation, auditability
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • successful product launches
  • improved system reliability
Typical background
background in software engineeringexperience with financial systems

Skills & requirements

Required

Backend DevelopmentReal-time SystemsCorrectnessReliabilityOperational Rigor

Preferred

AI IntegrationCross-team Collaboration

Stack & domain

Backend SystemsReal-time Money MovementDecisioning InfrastructureTechnical LeadershipCross-functional CollaborationArchitecture And EngineeringFintechCredit DecisionsFinancial Transactions

About the role

Original posting from Chime via Greenhouse

About the role

Chime’s Lending org builds the products and platforms that give members access to fair, transparent credit and liquidity when they need it most, from Earned Wage Access through MyPay, to flexible overdraft with SpotMe, to longer-term Instant Loans, and the platforms that power credit decisions, funding, repayments, and servicing behind the scenes.

We operate some of Chime’s most consequential systems. Our teams build real-time money movement and decisioning infrastructure at scale, including underwriting and eligibility, ledgering and reconciliation, capital markets workflows, repayment systems, and financial transactions that must be correct, resilient, and auditable.

As a Senior Software Engineer (L5) in Lending, you’ll work at the seam between member-facing products and the platforms that make them possible. This is a role for engineers who want to own more than a single service or feature area. You’ll lead technical initiatives that cut across products, platforms, and partner teams, helping shape how Lending evolves as a system, not just how one team ships.

You’ll design and build backend systems where correctness, reliability, speed, and operational rigor matter deeply. You’ll partner closely with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations to turn ambiguous opportunities into durable solutions, influence technical direction across team boundaries, and help raise the bar for how Lending engineers build together.

Why join Lending?

Work on systems that matter

The products and platforms we build directly impact millions of members and sit at the center of Chime’s mission to help everyday people unlock financial progress. The problems are complex, the stakes are real, and the work matters.

Own a bigger surface area

This role is designed for engineers who want broader scope. You won’t be limited to a narrow feature lane. You’ll work across product experiences and shared infrastructure, helping connect strategy, systems, and execution across Lending.

Build where product and platform meet

Some of the most interesting engineering work happens in the seams: where member experience depends on credit strategy, where product velocity depends on platform leverage, and where financial correctness meets business speed. This role sits in the middle of those seams and gives you meaningful influence over how they scale.

Operate in a fast-moving, high-accountability environment

Lending is a fast-paced fintech environment where we care about moving quickly and building well. We value thoughtful design, strong engineering judgment, high-quality code, and operational excellence. We also actively use AI where it can improve quality, speed, and leverage.

Grow your technical leadership

At L5, you’ll be expected to do more than deliver strong execution. You’ll lead through ambiguity, drive alignment across teams, shape architecture and engineering patterns, and improve how the org operates over time. This is a strong role for engineers who want to expand their influence and prepare for even larger technical scope.

In this role, you can expect to

Lead end-to-end architecture and delivery of backend systems that connect member-facing lending products with shared platforms such as Credit Risk, Capital Markets, Repayments, servicing, and core financial systems

Drive complex, cross-team initiatives from problem definition through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration, especially where multiple teams or domains need to move in sync

Own technical problems with real business and member impact, and bring structure, momentum, and clarity when the path is not obvious

Define and evolve APIs, integration patterns, and data contracts so product teams can move faster without compromising safety, correctness, or reuse

Design for scale, resiliency, observability, and operational excellence, with strong handling of failures, retries, reconciliation, auditability, and edge cases

Identify opportunities to turn one-off product needs into reusable platform capabilities that unlock future velocity across Lending

Partner closely with Product, Design, Risk, Data Science, Analytics, Finance, and Operations to translate ambiguous problems into practical, high-leverage technical solutions

Influence how product and platform teams work together by clarifying ownership, reducing integration friction, and improving the quality of technical decision-making across boundaries

Participate in on-call and incident response, and lead efforts to turn production lessons into lasting improvements in systems, tooling, and engineering practices

Mentor other engineers through design reviews, technical feedback, and hands-on partnership, helping raise the leadership capacity of the broader org

Contribute to roadmap and strategy conversations by identifying where platform investments can unlock multiple product outcomes over time

To thrive in this role, you have

8+ years of experience building and operating production software at scale, with a strong track record of owning backend systems end-to-end

Strong backend engineering fundamentals, ideally with Ruby on Rails or a comparable framework, and experience building APIs and distributed systems in production

Experience with transactional databases, asynchronous processing, caching, and large-scale application architecture

Strong system design judgment and the ability to make sound tradeoffs across correctness, scalability, resiliency, speed, and long-term maintainability

A track record of leading complex projects that span multiple teams, systems, or business workflows

Experience working in fintech, lending, banking, payments, risk, or other high-integrity domains where correctness, traceability, and operational rigor matter deeply

A high-ownership mindset and comfort operating in ambiguity, including the ability to create clarity, drive alignment, and move important work forward without waiting for perfect structure

Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across engineering and cross-functional teams in a low-ego, effective way

A product mindset and strong instincts for connecting technical decisions to member experience and business outcomes

Experience mentoring engineers and helping teams raise the bar on design quality, testing, operational excellence, and engineering ownership

Curiosity, sound judgment, and a genuine desire to understand systems deeply and improve them over time

Nice to have

Experience with lending or credit systems such as underwriting, eligibility, line assignment, limits, repayments, collections, servicing, or decisioning

Experience with financial platform domains such as capital markets workflows, reconciliations, ledgering, accounting interfaces, partner integrations, or bank integrations

Familiarity with experimentation, analytics, and data-informed systems used to safely evolve decisioning and product strategy over time

Experience helping product teams adopt shared platform capabilities through strong APIs, abstractions, internal tooling, or platform patterns

#LI-AC2 #LI-Hybrid

A little about us

At Chime, we believe that everyone can achieve financial progress. We created Chime—a financial technology company, not a bank*—on the premise that core banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. Through our user-friendly tools and intuitive platforms, we empower our members to take control of their finances and work towards their goals. Whether it's starting a savings account, purchasing a first car or home, launching a business, or pursuing higher education, we're proud to have helped millions unlock their financial potential.

We're a team of problem solvers, dreamers, and builders with one shared obsession: our members. From day one, Chimers have worked tirelessly to out-hustle and out-execute competitors to bring our mission to life. Their grit and determination inspire us to work harder every day to deliver the very best

Source: Chime careers (Greenhouse)

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