Staff Software Engineer - Data-Heavy Backend Systems

At River we are building the world’s most trusted financial institution to empower people to take ownership of their financial lives through Bitcoin, the world’s only incorruptible digital money. We believe in a future where every person will have bitcoin savings, and every business will have bitcoin on the balance sheet. We obsessively design and build delightful products that help our clients buy, sell, secure, and use Bitcoin.

We are looking for a staff software engineer to build and own data-heavy backend systems that power automation and decision-making across onboarding, risk, compliance, and operations. The work involves building reliable, scalable services, data pipelines, and internal tooling, including systems that integrate and leverage AI/ML in production. Our core stack includes Elixir, Python, and Postgres, with supporting data and analytical infrastructure.

River is growing quickly and has raised more than $50 million from leading investors, including Goldcrest, Kingsway, Polychain, M13, DG, and Valor. We have also released our company's financials and proof of reserves publicly, so all of our clients and employees can verify the robustness and growth of the business themselves.

What you will be doing

• Design, build, and own Elixir backend systems used across onboarding, fraud detection, compliance, and operations with a direct impact on the experience of hundreds of thousands of clients
• Build and maintain data pipelines, integrations, and analytics infrastructure for a rapidly growing team
• Develop internal tools used daily by operations and compliance teams
• Build and maintain training and inference infrastructure for machine learning models and contribute to models where appropriate
• Productionize outputs from machine learning models, heuristics, and LLM-based systems
• Partner closely with product management and operations to plan and scope new projects and initiatives
• Write high-quality, tested code
• Participate in code reviews
• Take long-term ownership of critical systems as River scales
  
  

What we look for in you

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering
• You have designed, built, and maintained production systems at scale and understand how to build reliable systems
• You take ownership of systems and are comfortable solving ambiguous problems
• You have experience working with data-heavy systems, pipelines, and complex integrations
• You are familiar with machine learning systems and how models are trained, deployed, and used in production
• You have strong judgment around correctness, reliability, and operational risk
• You're excited about what we are building at River
  
  

Nice to haves

• Experience in fintech, fraud, risk, or compliance domains
• You have worked with Elixir, Python, Postgres, and cloud data infrastructure
• You have worked on machine learning or AI-powered systems
• You have worked at a rapidly scaling company
• Interest in Bitcoin
  
  

Location & Salary

• 100% remote option available within the Americas and Europe, with offices in SF, NYC, and Columbus
• Salary range between $200,000 - $250,000 based on skills and experience (Note: this salary will not be location adjusted, the salary range is the same globally.)
• Significant equity stock options
• Medical, Dental and Vision Benefits
• Unlimited PTO
• Parental Leave separate from regular PTO policy
• 401k