Software Engineer 1, Platform at Sydecar in San Francisco Office - Hybrid

Job description

• Application
• About Us
• As a Software Engineer 1 on the Platform Team, you'll help build the systems and tooling that raise the floor for every engineer at Sydecar. You'll join a collaborative, high-trust team that values ownership, thoughtful execution, and a sustainable pace. Your work — faster pipelines, reliable infrastructure, safer releases, and a stronger security posture — will be felt across the entire engineering organization. This is a great role for an early-career engineer who wants to grow quickly alongside experienced platform engineers.
• This is a hybrid role based in San Francisco or New York City with in-office attendance of two to three days per week.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve the internal developer platform — CI/CD pipelines, build/deploy automation, and local and preview environments — creating a "golden path" that helps every engineer ship quickly and safely.
• Design, operate, and scale core shared services and cloud infrastructure as code (Terraform), with strong reliability, observability, and cost efficiency.
• Advance release automation and test automation so shipping to production is routine and low-risk, with safe rollout patterns and easy rollbacks.
• Strengthen the platform's security posture and help build a distributed security practice across the engineering org.
• Partner with product teams as an enabler — help build standards and interfaces, and co-build where teams share an interest or have a timely dependency — while keeping the platform focused on general-purpose foundations rather than product-specific work.
• Contribute to projects from concept through deployment, learning to balance speed with scalability.
• Grow through pairing, code review, and mentorship from senior engineers, and take part in architecture discussions.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, design, and operations.

Requirements

• A strong computer science foundation — data structures, algorithms, and systems fundamentals (degree in CS/related field or equivalent practical experience).
• AI-native: fluent and comfortable using agentic / AI-assisted development tools as part of your everyday workflow.
• Curious, a fast learner, and a self-starter who takes ownership and figures things out.
• A collaborative team player with clear communication skills.
• 0–2 years of professional work experience (internships, co-ops, and substantial personal or academic projects count).
• Fintech experience (payments, compliance, or regulated environments).
• Exposure to internal developer platforms or developer-experience tooling.
• Terraform and GCP familiarity; observability tooling (logging, metrics, tracing).
• Security interest — OWASP-style practices, secrets management, or dependency/vulnerability scanning.
• Exposure to TypeScript/Node.js, NestJS, Prisma, PostgreSQL, and Playwright / React Testing Library.

Skills

Required

• Curious, fast learner, self-starter

Preferred

• Terraform and GCP familiarity