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Sr. Engineering Manager, Backend

Betterment HQ - New York City

About Betterment

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission: making people’s lives better. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (three days/ week in-office).

About the role

As an Engineering Manager in Broker Dealer, you'll help balance on-time delivery of new B/D features alongside system stability and scale, all while helping mentor and grow a team of talented engineers. Broker Dealer is the core of the Betterment platform. On any given day, we need to securely move millions of dollars through the Betterment system. At the same time, every transaction must flow through a complicated series of risk checks to ensure strict regulatory compliance. Every ounce of efficiency and intelligence we pour into this system translates into more value for our customers. We’re looking for an Engineering leader to contribute to answering our most difficult backend scaling, software design, and optimization questions. While we don’t expect you to code on a daily basis, we do expect you to quickly familiarize yourself with the tech stack, codebase and specific business domains so that you can better support the team’s mission and deliver meaningful business impact. This role will be overseeing a team of individual contributors, and will work closely with other engineering managers in Broker Dealer. 

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below, we've reflected the base salary range we would offer for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and interview performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. 

  • New York City: $210,000 - $235,000

We offer a competitive equity package, health, dental and vision benefits, and a 401(k) offering with employer match as well as flexible PTO policy. This job is eligible for variable compensation in the form of a discretionary company incentive bonus.  For jobs based out of our NYC HQ, we require in office attendance Tuesday through Thursday, weekly.

A day in the life

  • Manage a team of 5-8 backend engineers who build innovative trading, money-movement and record keeping technology that powers our investing products.
  • Foster career development and align roadmap opportunities with each engineer’s growth interests, keeping them technically engaged.
  • Cultivate a team culture that values accountability, constructive feedback, and celebrates successes.
  • Be a hands-on technical mentor by regularly diving into the codebase, participating in code reviews, partnering with stakeholders to shape solutions, and driving effective technical decision-making.
  • Champion maintainability and reliability by advocating for the long-term stability of the technology your team builds.
  • Balance the need for speed with the importance of correctness and quality in every project your team undertakes.
  • Drive process improvements to ensure day-to-day effectiveness within the team.
  • Continuously refine team processes and practices to deliver high-impact, high-quality outcomes for the business.
  • Develop deep domain and industry knowledge to be a highly effective partner across internal and external stakeholders.
  • Collaborate closely with Product and Engineering leaders, Operations, Legal and Compliance teams to ensure we consistently deliver the right solutions in the right way.

What we’re looking for

  • 3+ years of experience in formal Engineering Management of direct reports.
  • Experience managing, mentoring, and inspiring talented engineers, guiding them toward excellence in both professional growth and project outcomes.
  • 5+ years of experience in building and maintaining backend distributed systems using Java or a similar programming language.
  • Comfortable diving into unfamiliar codebases to support and unblock the team.
  • A proven track record to rapidly close knowledge gaps, enhancing productivity and establishing trust within the organization.
  • A track record of fostering accountability and ownership, motivating teams to take initiative and consistently deliver.
  • Experience cultivating high-performing teams that balance speed of execution with the necessary rigor to maintain quality.
  • Ability to adjust leadership style to meet the evolving needs of the team and the business.
  • Effective collaborator capable of working with other engineering teams, product managers, subject matter experts, non-technical stakeholders and third party vendors to build and ship high quality software.
  • Ability to translate business strategy into Engineering initiatives that drive meaningful outcomes.

 

What being at Betterment means for you

We change lives

Join a community of innovators working to transform financial outcomes for real people. Your work will make an impact, always laddering up to our mission: making people's lives better.

We set audacious goals

We set them for the company, our customers, and ourselves—and we won’t stop until we reach them. We don’t just show up; we give our all, then celebrate our wins.

We value all perspectives

When we collaborate, we're at our best. We believe diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes and strive to uphold our supportive and inclusive community.

 We invest in you with:

  • A competitive suite of benefits, including: medical, dental, and vision insurance; life and AD&D insurance; STD and LTD benefits, including infertility support and World Professional Association for Transgender Health approved benefits; and generous parental leave. 
  • Flexible paid time off (and encouragement to use it!)
  • Meaningful opportunity for community building through our 7 Employee Resource Groups
  • Empowerment to own and lead change and affect the business
  • Dedicated professional development opportunities
  • Lunch from our in-house chef three days a week at our NYC headquarters

What happens next

We’ll take a few weeks to review all applications. If we’d like to spend more time with you, we’ll reach out to arrange next steps, which will include 3-4 sets of meetings with your future colleagues.

In the interview process, we’ll look to learn more about your skills, experiences, capabilities, and motivators. Many of our questions will be aimed at understanding how you might operate here at Betterment. Depending on the role, we may ask you to complete a case study exercise or technical assessments, as we want to collect a robust set of data points to better inform our decisions.

On average, it takes us around 3-5 weeks to make a hiring decision, depending on your availability and sense of urgency. As a best practice, we aim to interview at least 2-3 final round candidates before making a hiring decision. Please note that, as we usually receive an overwhelming number of  applications for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the interview process. 

We recognize that interviewing for a new role is a big deal. We appreciate you considering Betterment as the next step in your career, and our Recruiting Team is here to support and advocate for you through the interview process!

Betterment is dedicated to providing accommodations to candidates upon request. If you need accommodations at any point throughout the interview process, please reach out to your recruiter. 

Please note that in any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Come join us! 

We’re an equal opportunity employer and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. We strictly prohibit and do not tolerate discrimination against employees, applicants, or any other covered persons because of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex, gender (including gender nonconformity and status as a transgender or transsexual individual), sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, past, current or prospective service in the uniformed services, predisposing genetic characteristic, domestic violence victim status, arrest records, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state or local law. 

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Betterment participates in E-Verify. We will provide the Social Security Administration, and if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization. Please note that we do not use this information to pre-screen job applicants.
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We collect and store personal information for the purposes of candidate tracking (for this role and future opportunities). The information you provide in the course of completing your application will be kept for up to 24 months. We use tools provided by third-party service providers but do not share candidate information for any purpose other than for recruiting. To access the data that is collected, request deletion or to make updates to your candidate profile, please email team.hire@betterment.com. 

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