Principal Software Engineer

About Highnote

Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is the unified platform for embedded finance, built for modern issuing, acquiring, credit, ledger, and real-time money movement. With an integrated ledger, full program management, and a purpose-built architecture, we help companies design financial products around their customers and launch faster with greater control.

We’ve raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 140+ employees across 25+ US States, with headquarters in San Francisco. Along the way, we’ve built one of the most experienced payments teams in the industry.

We’re fast-moving and hands-on, and we believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. Our values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, guide how we build the payment products of tomorrow's business needs. We’re looking for people who want to help shape the future of payments.

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
• Excitement about shipping customer centric software
• Experience with Java >= 11, JPA ORM mapping, Crafting SQLs, unit and integration testing
• 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
• Hands-on experience building payments products, including merchant/customer onboarding, disputes, and risk management

Bonus skills

• Experience contributing to Card Acquiring platforms
• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS
• SpringBoot, Docker, and Kubernetes
• Experience with big data technologies such as BigQuery and RedShift
• A background in the fin-tech space
• Experience building AI agents for financial or payment platforms
• Familiarity with AI agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, CrewAI, or AutoGen)
• Working knowledge of GraphQL

Why Highnote?

• Build from the ground up. As an early-stage company, we give every employee the chance to shape what we build and how we operate, with impact across the whole organization.
• Payments-obsessed, from every background. Some of us come from fintech and some of us don’t. We value the range of experience and perspective each person brings.
• Small on hierarchy, big on growth. We’re a flat organization, so everyone works directly with our leadership team. We’re looking for builders who thrive in ambiguity.
• Backed by top investors. Our investors include Oak HC/FT, Costanoa Ventures, Adams Street Partners, Westcap, and Pinegrove Venture Partners. Our angel investors include Bill Ready (CEO of Pinterest) and Renaud Laplanche (Co-Founder and CEO of Upgrade).

Highnote benefits

• Equity in Highnote
• Flexible paid time off
• Health coverage: 100% covered for employees and 75% for dependents
• 401(k) program
• Paid parental leave
• Remote work support: a home office stipend, plus internet and phone reimbursement

Compensation

Our total rewards approach is built on fair, equitable, location-based pay that reflects both performance and potential. We set our packages using thorough market research, and they combine base salary, equity, and benefits. In line with pay transparency requirements, the annual salary range for this role is $190,000-$240,000.

Work Location

Roles based in San Francisco are hybrid, and we’re in the office Monday through Thursday. We offer flexible arrangements depending on how far you live from our downtown SF office. We believe in the power of face-to-face connection, so we give priority to candidates who can work from the office.

Equal Opportunity

Highnote is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team, and we welcome applicants of all backgrounds and identities. We do not discriminate on the basis of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by US federal, state, or local law, or by the laws of the country or jurisdiction where you work. We also invite you to share the pronouns you’d like us to use (e.g., she/her, he/him, they/them).

A Note on Recruitment Fraud

Highnote will never ask you for payment or bank details, and we never conduct interviews over text or chat apps. All official communication comes from an @highnote.com email address or through Greenhouse.