Software Engineer, Payments

GovWell•New York, NY

2d•$160,000 - $260,000•Hybrid

About The Position

GovWell is building the AI operating system transforming how governments serve communities, starting with local agencies. GovWell replaces legacy software for municipalities and counties, empowering public servants to radically streamline public services and cut internal processing time for permits and licenses by up to 95%. Founded in 2023, GovWell powers 5,000+ mission-critical processes for agencies in 35+ states serving millions of residents. The company has raised $35M in funding from Insight Partners, Work-Bench, and Bienville Capital, and the team works in person at GovWell HQ in New York City. Payments infrastructure for local government is a genuinely hard problem — real money, strict audit requirements, dozens of different fee types and collection methods, all running underneath workflows that can't afford to break. It's also a problem that's specific to how municipalities and counties actually operate, not something you can bolt on from a generic payments product. GovWell is hiring a Payments Engineer to own this space and build it into the financial backbone the rest of the platform runs on. This isn't a feature added to an existing system — it's a domain still being defined, which means the person who takes this on will shape the core architecture, not just extend someone else's. We have strong opinions about the principles that this deserves — real auditability, precision in how fees are computed, a system finance teams can actually trust — but we're looking for someone who can take that point of view, sharpen it, and build it. Because so much of this is still unwritten, you'll have more autonomy and ownership here than in almost any other role at GovWell. We have a hybrid work culture that combines regular in-person collaboration at our New York City office (3+ days per week) with flexibility to work remotely. This role reports directly to our CTO and Co-Founder, Ben Cohen.

Requirements

Experience designing financial or transactional systems where correctness isn't optional — payments, billing, ledgers, or similar domains where an unbalanced number is a real problem, not a bug ticket.
You have real opinions about how a payments system should be architected, and you want a role where you can bring them, not just implement someone else's spec.
Comfortable with ambiguity at the domain-design level: this isn't "build this feature," it's "help decide what the right abstraction is," and you find that exciting rather than uncomfortable.
You think in terms of invariants and edge cases — what happens when a webhook fires twice, when a fee schedule changes mid-invoice, when a refund needs to partially reverse a payment that's already been partially paid.
You're excited to work with the latest AI models, both in the product and in your own development workflow.
You've owned a large product area end-to-end and can point to something specific you shipped and stayed accountable for.
Strong product instincts: you ask questions until you actually understand the customer's problem, not just the ticket description.
You align closely with our Core Values.

Nice To Haves

Experience with idempotency, webhooks, and payment processor integrations (Stripe, Finix, or similar) is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

Design the financial architecture GovWell runs on — the system of record for every dollar municipalities collect, refund, or hold on someone's behalf.
Build a real ledger from the ground up: one that's fully auditable, mathematically consistent, and trusted by finance teams without a second look.
Turn fee calculation into a system that computes with precision, instead of something staff track by hand or reconstruct after the fact.
Make partial payments, deposits, and refunds first-class citizens of the platform, not workarounds bolted on after the core system was built.
Own the migration from where payments live today to where they need to be — with real customers, real money, and no room for a clean-slate do-over.
Partner directly with the people who depend on this system being right: finance teams, municipal staff, and the engineers building the workflows this ledger will support.
Set the technical standard other engineers build against once this domain exists — you're not implementing someone else's design, you're establishing it.