Software Engineer

TaxHawk•Provo, UT

10d•Onsite

About The Position

TaxHawk, Inc. is the company behind FreeTaxUSA, one of the most trusted and widely used online tax preparation platforms in the country. We help millions of Americans prepare and file their taxes accurately and affordably every year. As we continue to grow, we're building our in-house software engineering team to support the full range of our business and product needs. Every spring, millions of people trust us with the most sensitive numbers in their lives, and most of them show up in the same six weeks. An engineer on our team works with AI to design, develop, test, and maintain the Java and Python services that carry a filer's return the rest of the way: the e-file pipeline that creates, validates, transmits, and acknowledges federal, state, and city returns with the taxing agencies, and the communications platform that tells filers what happened by email, SMS, and voice. Both run at seasonal scale, and both have to be right.

Requirements

Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent experience
Experience with backend development
Proficiency in Java or Python, and willingness to work in both
Working knowledge of relational databases, SQL, and HTTP API design
A security instinct — you think about how a feature could be abused before it ships, not after
Understanding of software development lifecycle and version control
Clear written communication — you'll be explaining filing and delivery failures to people who didn't write the code
Be enjoyable to be around, be direct, but be kind

Nice To Haves

Experience building and operating JVM microservices on Kubernetes
Experience with message queues, batch processing, or event-driven pipelines against sharded databases
Experience integrating with external partner APIs where the spec is fixed and the deadlines are not yours
Familiar with AI models and how to use them effectively
Experience with SAST or other static analysis tooling — triaging findings, cutting false positives, integrating into CI
Experience in a regulated domain handling sensitive personal or financial data

Responsibilities

Write clean, maintainable, and efficient code in Java and Python
Work together with AI to build and improve the e-file pipeline — return creation, validation, transmission, and acknowledgement processing across a distributed set of services
Ship new features on the email and SMS/voice platform and maintain the services behind delivery, bounce handling, and retries
Triage and remediate GitLab SAST findings
Own features from technical design through production support
Write and maintain tests for logic where being wrong has consequences for filers
Participate in code reviews and technical discussions
Debug and optimize application performance, including under seasonal load
Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers