Senior Software Engineer at GiveDirectly
About this role
Technology will play a critical role in enabling the next generation of cash delivery: from identifying recipients without needing to knock on doors to a modern payments infrastructure that gets dollars in recipients’ hands faster and more scalably. We are seeking a software engineer to help design and build our systems for identifying, enrolling, and paying recipients.
You’ll have the opportunity to wear many hats, from driving architecture decisions to building out robust payments infrastructure. Your work will directly help scale GiveDirectly’s capacity to give cash to more people, across more countries, more quickly, while maintaining a high quality recipient experience.
This role will report to the Manager of Programs Engineering and work closely with Technical Program Management and Data teams, as well as cross-functional stakeholders such as Finance and Operations.
Reports to: Crystal Li
Level: Senior Software Engineer (internal: Senior Manager)
Travel Requirement: Must be able to travel ~1-2 times per year to one of our countries of operation for team retreats or field visits.
Priority Application Deadline: June 15
What you’ll do:
- Architect and develop scalable systems for enrolling, verifying and paying hundreds of thousands of recipients globally
- Improve and maintain CI/CD pipelines to streamline the software development lifecycle
- Collaborate with Product Managers, Technical Program Managers and Operations to design and build tools and automations used to launch payment programs across multiple countries
- Debug issues across multiple layers of our stack
- Advocate for engineering-driven investments with a vision for keeping our systems flexible and maintainable to meet the evolving needs of our programs and recipients
What you’ll bring:
- Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity. We welcome and strongly encourage applications from candidates who have personal or professional experience in the low-income and/or historically marginalized communities that we serve.
- Language Requirement: English
- 4+ years of industry experience creating production-caliber software and systems
- Experience with backend architecture: databases, cloud services, APIs
- Experience building infrastructure to deploy software
- Experience with strongly-typed, object-oriented programming such as Java, C#, Go, etc. and scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, etc.
- High degree of ownership and autonomy - you proactively advocate for ways to improve systems and constantly leave our codebase in a better state than you found it.
- Strong analytical skills and communication - able to break down complex problems, describe technical trade-offs, and collaborate with cross-functional partners (e.g. technical program managers, product managers)
- Bonus: Experience using Python and AWS in a production environment
- Bonus: experience with payments/financial software and/or experience with microservice/serverless architecture
Compensation
At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to ensure that staff’s total compensation package (base compensation + bonus) falls within the 75th percentile of similar roles, at similar organizations. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles.
- The United States base salary for this role is $157,500
This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process.
Why work at GiveDirectly?
At GiveDirectly, we work to ensure that you have everything you need to excel in your role and on your team, including:
- A positive and supportive team with opportunities for advancement
- A demonstrated commitment to helping all staff develop and grow
- A competitive salary, including bonus
- A robust health benefits plan (exact details will vary by country)
- Unlimited PTO (that we encourage staff to take!)
- Desk allowance and flexible work location
Read more about our ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts here and about our decision to move our central support teams to remote first here.
About the hiring process
Format: The hiring process follows the same general outline for all open roles:
First interview (30 mins)
Take home skills assignment (~2 hours)
Second interview (1 hour)*
Third interview (1 hour)*
Final interview (1 hour)
Reference checks (30 mins each)*For some roles, second & third interviews are combined into a panel interview. If there are adjustments or variations on this process, those changes will be communicated during the first interview.
Venue: We conduct interviews over Google Meet with camera on (unless communicated otherwise).
Accessibility: Closed captioning is available during all Google Meet interviews, and interviewers will also post interview questions in the chat box throughout the call. If you need assistance accessing either of these features, please let your interviewer know at the start of your interview!
We’re committed to running an inclusive and accessible application process for all of our open roles. If there are questions or concerns you have about the accessibility of our hiring process, we warmly invite you to reach out to careers@givedirectly.org.
**GD is committed to observing all local, national and international laws that protect children, vulnerable adults, and basic human rights of all. GD is committed to a policy of “zero tolerance for sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH)” and expects anyone who works for GD to uphold the protection and safeguarding of our recipients as a priority.**