Principal Software Engineer - Data Platform

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.

Job Description

The Data Platform Team is part of the Data Organization and is responsible for designing and building modern scalable, secure and reliable data platforms and data pipelines. With the data platforms, we will be able to serve the product/customer data needs, improve operational efficiency and increase revenue.

What you’ll be doing

• Building secure and scalable data platforms that support our product/customer needs and power data driven decision making. 
• Writing high quality and robustly tested code, mostly in Java and Python.
• Understanding business/data needs and growth to build the right solutions.
• Documenting your work to support our rapidly-scaling company.
• Interfacing with internal business stakeholders and technology partners to support day to day operations and create new data products.

What we are looking for

• 12+ years experience building high volume and low latency data platform and data pipelines using distributed event technology, e.g. Pubsub, Kafka, Kinesis, etc., and data storage system, e.g. Spanner/Postgres, BigQuery, Cassandra, data lakes, etc.
• Preferred experience with BigQuery and Snowflake.
• Able to model and design modern data structures in SQL/NoSQL databases
• A history of writing scalable, performant and maintainable code
• Experience with Java >= 11 or Python >= 3.7
• 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.

Bonus skills

• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS
• Docker and Kubernetes
• Able to model and design modern data structured in data lakes and data warehouses
• A background in the fin-tech space

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.