Staff Software Engineer - Backend, Cards

At Tilt (formerly Empower), we see a side of people that traditional lenders miss. Our mobile-first products and machine learning-powered credit models look beyond outdated credit scores, using over 250 real-time financial signals to recognize real potential. Named among the next billion-dollar startups, we're not just changing how people access financial products — we're creating a new credit system that backs the working, whatever they're working toward.

As a Staff Engineer on our Card team, you'll join a high-caliber engineering organization at a critical inflection point in Empower's growth trajectory. You'll work directly with our product and technical leaders across both Card Spend and Card Payments domains, helping drive the technical strategy that powers our AI-driven credit platform.

Within our team structure, you'll be a force multiplier - someone who can both execute independently on complex challenges while elevating the capabilities of the entire team. You'll have significant autonomy to identify opportunities and drive solutions across our payments and spend domains, with the support of experienced engineers who understand our unique architecture and business model.

Tilt is a remote-first company. We drive connectivity through regular company offsites. Travel for company offsites is expected at a minimum 2 times a year.

The impact of this role is tremendous: you'll be scaling one of the fastest-growing credit card platforms while building systems that directly contribute to Empower's mission of financial empowerment. Our credit business represents a substantial and rapidly growing portion of Empower's revenue mix - your work will be instrumental in achieving our ambitious growth targets.

You'll be responsible for driving both adoption and utilization of our card products through engineering excellence. Our established AI-driven credit underwriting model has already proven successful, achieving exceptional approval rates with significantly lower customer acquisition costs. Your role focuses on scaling our platform to handle substantial growth - evolving our existing systems to support an expanding customer base while maintaining our competitive advantage.

Depending on your interests and our business priorities, you'll focus on projects including:

• Enhancing our AI-driven payment scheduling systems that accurately forecast customer paycheck timing

• Scaling our rewards platform to drive increased card utilization

• Optimizing our virtual card infrastructure to enable instant spending

• Building automated loss mitigation features that leverage our proprietary risk models

• Creating sophisticated customer segmentation tools that support our portfolio expansion from non-prime to near-prime offerings

• 7+ years developing web APIs within .NET (C#)

• Experience building resilient financial systems with state machine logic and complex lifecycles

• Ability to balance immediate business needs with long-term architectural considerations

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, queue-based architectures, and data-intensive applications

• Experience scaling consumer-facing products with significant transaction volumes

• Ability to collaborate effectively with product, risk, and operational teams

• Comfort making decisions with incomplete information and adapting as new data emerges

• Skill in mentoring and elevating the capabilities of other engineers

• Able to effectively leverage AI-powered development tools (e.g., Cursor, Augment, Factory) to enhance productivity, code quality, and collaboration.

Don’t meet every qualification? We care about potential over your past. If you're bringing ambition and drive to what we're building, we want to hear from you.

• Virtual-first teamwork: The Tilt team is collaborating across 14 countries, 12 time zones, and counting. You’ll get started with a WFH office reimbursement.

• Competitive pay: We're big on potential, and it's reflected in our competitive compensation packages and generous equity.

• Complete support: Find flexible health plans at every premium level, and substantial subsidies that stand up to global standards.

• Visibility is yours: You can count on direct exposure to our leadership team — we’re a team where good ideas travel quickly.

• Paid global onsites: Magic happens IRL: we gather twice yearly to reconnect over shared meals or kayaking adventures. (We’ve visited Vail, San Diego, and Mexico City, to name a few.)

• Impact is recognized: Growth opportunities follow your contributions, not rigid promotion timelines.

We're looking for people who chase excellence and impact. Those who stand behind their work, celebrating the wins and learning from the missteps equally. We foster an environment where every voice is valued and mutual respect is non-negotiable — brilliant jerks need not apply. We're in this together, working to expand access to fair credit and prove that people are incredible. When you join us, it's not just another day at the [virtual] office, you're helping millions of hardworking people reach better financial futures.

You’re pushing ahead in your career? We can get behind that. Join us in building the credit system that people deserve.