Principal Software Engineer
Principal Software Engineer at Highnote, an embedded finance card issuing and processing platform, building secure, compliant payments platform products — mostly in Java — with strong use of AI-powered development tools. Hybrid role based in San Francisco with in-office days Monday–Thursday; salary range $190k–$240k plus equity.
- Compensation
- $190K–$240K / yr
- Location
- San Francisco, California
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Principal
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 12+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 12+ years experience building production software systems
- History of writing scalable, performant and maintainable code
- Excitement about shipping customer centric software
- Experience with Java >= 11, JPA ORM mapping, crafting SQLs, unit and integration testing
- Proficiency using AI-powered development tools (e.g., Claude Code) across the full SDLC, with a passion for AI-driven development
Nice to have
- Experience contributing to Card Acquiring platforms
- Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS
- SpringBoot, Docker, and Kubernetes
- Experience with big data technologies such as BigQuery and RedShift
- A background in the fin-tech space
- Experience building AI agents for financial or payment platforms
- Familiarity with AI agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, CrewAI, or AutoGen)
Full description
About Highnote
Founded in 2020 by a team of leaders from Braintree, PayPal, and Lending Club, Highnote is an embedded finance company that sets the standard in modern card platform management. As an all-in-one card issuer processor and program management platform, we provide digital-first organizations with the flexibility to seamlessly issue and process payment cards, embed virtual and physical card payments, and integrate ledger and wallet functionalities—empowering businesses to drive growth and profitability.
We’ve raised $145M+ and have grown our team to 140+ employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, we’ve managed to build one of the most advanced payments teams in the industry, with team members in 25+ US states.
Operating through our core values of customer obsession, executional excellence, intentional inclusion, we’re helping businesses grow for the future by creating the payment products demanded by tomorrow, with the ability to solve for use cases that don’t exist yet.
We are fast-moving, hands-on, and strongly believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. We believe we’re unlocking incredible opportunities that can change the future of payments, as long as we have the right people to make it happen.
What you’ll be doing
- Building secure and compliant platform products that solve customer needs
- Writing high quality and robustly tested code, mostly in Java
- Understanding customer problems to build the right solutions
- Documenting your work to support our rapidly-scaling company
- Interfacing with a variety of the company’s domains to strengthen our platform
What we are looking for
- 12+ years experience building production software systems
- A history of writing scalable, performant and maintainable code. We strongly believe languages can be learned and care more about your engineering skill over frameworks
- Excitement about shipping customer centric software
- Experience with Java >= 11, JPA ORM mapping, Crafting SQLs, unit and integration testing
- 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
- Hands-on experience building payments products, including merchant/customer onboarding, disputes, and risk management
Bonus skills
- Experience contributing to Card Acquiring platforms