Staff Software Engineer, Identity and Verification

Trustly•San Francisco, CA

12h•Hybrid

About The Position

Trustly is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to own Identity and Verification end to end, including its architecture, reliability, production operations, and future direction. The domain includes consumer login and identity verification, Self ID and Network Check, and account ownership and holder-name checks based on bank data. These services are used by Checkout, Orchestration, and Risk in the checkout path and must meet strict latency and availability commitments. The role begins with quickly learning a mature, business-critical codebase, using AI tools to understand it and documenting the knowledge through design documents, interface definitions, and runbooks. The engineer will work with current engineers across the Americas and Europe to transfer knowledge, own service contracts and production health, and operate the services through on-call, SLAs, incident response, and root-cause fixes. Within the first year, the engineer will help hire and lead the team that will own the domain. The position also involves directing AI-assisted implementation, reviewing output against requirements, and owning integration testing. This is a hybrid role based out of Trustly’s San Francisco office, with team members expected in the office Tuesday through Thursday. Trustly describes its benefits as including flexible paid time off and PTO accrual plans, medical, dental, vision and other insurance, FSA and HSA plans, a home-office setup allowance, an internet stipend, retirement plan matching for 401(k) and RRSP, and gender-neutral paid parental leave. Benefits and total compensation packages described apply to full-time employees, with some exclusions for temporary positions.

Requirements

Typically 10 or more years building and operating production software systems, including several years owning systems at staff level or equivalent.
Hands-on experience with payments, banking, or other financial systems where correctness, auditability, and uptime matter.
Experience carrying the pager for systems built and improving those systems based on operational experience.
A track record of taking over an unfamiliar, business-critical codebase and becoming its owner.
Daily use of AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Copilot, with clear judgment about their strengths and the need for human review.
Strong distributed-systems design skills, including data consistency, idempotency, and concurrency.
Strong writing skills, including design documents and incident write-ups that others can reuse.
Production experience with Java or a comparable backend language.
Experience owning consumer authentication or identity-verification services in a regulated financial product where fraud, latency, and conversion matter.
Availability to work hybrid from the San Francisco office, with in-office attendance Tuesday through Thursday.

Nice To Haves

Experience with ACH, RTP, FedNow, or open banking.
Experience helping build a new engineering hub or leading a major platform transition.

Responsibilities

Own the architecture, service contracts, and production health of Identity and Verification.
Own the operation of the services, including on-call, SLAs, incident response, and root-cause fixes.
Meet service observability standards and measurably improve the service each quarter.
Learn and map the existing codebase using AI tools, and create design documents, interface definitions, and runbooks.
Partner with engineers across the Americas and Europe to transfer knowledge.
Direct AI-assisted implementation by writing and closing implementation plans, reviewing output against requirements, and owning integration testing.
Help hire and lead the team that will own the domain.