Our mission is to make higher education accessible and affordable for everyone. We empower students with financial support and supercharge their ability to pay down their debt, so they can get on the right financial track, fast.
We build tools that help people feel in control of their financial future, including:
- Private student loans - low rates, people-first service, and flexible payments.
- Student loan refinancing - break free from high-interest rates or monthly payments.
- Scholarships - access to thousands of scholarships to help students pay less.
Earnies are committed to helping students live their best lives, free from the stress of student debt. If you’re as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let’s build something great together!
Title: Staff Software Engineer
Duties: The Staff Software Engineer (Multiple Positions Open) at Earnest LLC in Oakland, CA will
drive the technical strategy and execution for our engineering teams. Lead the development of a
scalable, high-performance lending ecosystem from customer onboarding to checkout. Architect and
build customer-centric financial products, ensuring a frictionless and optimized user experience and
orchestrating large-scale financial transactions. Define and execute the technical vision and best
practices for a high-performing engineering team. Lead architectural decisions to enhance scalability,
reliability, and efficiency of the lending platform. Collaborate with Product, UX, and Business teams to
align technology with strategic goals. Design, build, and maintain customer-facing lending
applications using Node.js, TypeScript, React/Redux, Angular, Sequelize, PostgreSQL, and Docker.
Develop and optimize high-quality, testable code, implementing unit and integration tests with Mocha,
Chai, Sinon, and Sequelize. Ensure performance, security, and scalability through best-in-class
software engineering practices. Identify and resolve defects through debugging, profiling, logging, log
analysis, tracing, and FullStory session replays. Oversee code deployment to Staging and Production
environments. Partner with Quality Engineers to address issues found in testing and improve automated
testing coverage. Lead and participate in Agile ceremonies. Break down product requirements into
engineering deliverables in Jira. Review and provide critical feedback on Product Requirements
Documents, Epics, and User Stories, influencing the technical and business roadmap. Recommend
alternative technical solutions to optimize delivery speed, enhance customer experience, and reduce
costs. Maintain technical documentation. Contribute to Earnest’s DevOps culture and participate in
rotating on-call support for production applications.
Position is 100% remote. Salary: $207,585 per year.
Requirements: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a closely related
field, plus 3 years of software development experience. The 3 years of experience must include 3 years
of experience with each of the following: (1) building highly distributed microservices; (2) SQL
databases, including PostgreSQL, and caching, performance, monitoring, and scalability; (3) server-
side technologies, including Node.js, Typescript, and Javascript; and (4) client-side technologies,
including React Native and Angular. Must include two years of experience with: AWS or similar
cloud-based infrastructure; and leading the architecture, design, development, and deployment of
large-scale projects.
This notice is subject to Earnest LLC's employee referral program.
Interested candidates can apply online at www.earnest.com/careers [earnest.com] or send a resume to
[email protected] and reference job code 058.
A little about our pay philosophy: We take pride in compensating our employees fairly and equitably. We are showcasing a range of your potential base salary based on the roles location. The successful candidate’s starting pay will also be determined based on job-related qualifications, internal compensation, candidate location and budget. This range may be modified in the future.
Earnest believes in enabling our employees to live their best lives. We offer a variety of perks and competitive benefits, including:
- Health, Dental, & Vision benefits plus savings plans
- Mac computers + work-from-home stipend to set up your home office
- Monthly internet and phone reimbursement
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
- 401(k) plan to help you save for retirement plus a company match
- Robust tuition reimbursement program
- $1,000 travel perk on each Earnie-versary to anywhere in the world
- Competitive days of annual PTO
- Competitive parental leave
What Makes an Earnie:
At Earnest, our people bring our cultural principles to life. These principles define how we work, how we win, and what we expect of ourselves and each other:
- Every Second Counts: Speed is our competitive advantage. Our customers need better solutions, and the faster we execute, the greater our chance of success.
- Choose To Do Hard Things: We win by tackling the hard things that others avoid, fueled by grit and resilience.
- Pursue Excellence: Great companies, teams, and individuals never settle and are proud of the work that they do. What’s good enough today won’t be good enough tomorrow. Excellence isn’t a destination; it’s a mindset of continuous improvement.
- Lead Together: Our success comes from how we work together. Leadership is not about titles—it is about action. We take ownership, drive results, and move forward as a team.
- Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously: We take our work seriously, not ourselves. The stakes are high, but a sense of humor keeps us grounded, creative, and resilient.
At Earnest, we are committed to building an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. Our belief is that a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging enables us to move forward with our mission. We are dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team and encourage anyone to apply if your experience is close to what we are looking for.
Earnest provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or genetics. Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for the position in a manner consistent with the Fair Chance Ordinance.
Top Skills
What We Do
We empower past, present, and soon-to-be students to maximize their financial futures through thoughtful guidance and impactful products. We build tools that help people feel in control of their financial future, including:
1. Student Loan Refinancing - break free from high interest rates or monthly payments.
2. Private Student Loans - low rates, people-first service, and flexible payments.
3. Debt Management - manage all your accounts and become debt-free sooner.
4. Scholarships - access to thousands of scholarships to help students pay less.
Why Work With Us
We strive to maintain and strengthen diversity and inclusion through employee-led Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that empower our Earnies to step into leadership roles and drive our culture. Through ERGs, and with the support of our Executives, we provide a safe space for all Earnies to be their true selves.
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