Payments Engineer

**The Better Money Company** Payments Engineer; $200K–$225K+ base + equity (6-year vest); New York City (On-site)

**About Company** The Better Money Company (TBMC) is building a stablecoin clearinghouse — the infrastructure layer that lets stablecoins move like money rather than a trading asset. The clearinghouse gives fintechs, neobanks, banks, and payments companies 1:1 at-par swaps across chains and issuers, with guaranteed settlement times, fixed fees, and a compliant source of funds. They already support 8 of the top 10 issuance platforms and move real money for customers today.

Backed by $10M from a16z Crypto, plus BoxGroup, Sunflower Capital, and leading fintech angels. Design partners include Ramp and Modern Treasury. Founded by Sam Broner (ex-a16z investor covering stablecoins, ex-Boston Fed, ex-Microsoft engineer), with early team from Visa crypto treasury ops and a16z.

A small, deliberately tight NYC team — they shipped money movement within six months of starting and optimize for autonomy, ownership, and pace over headcount.

**About the Role** The clearinghouse lives or dies on correct, resilient money movement. The Payments Engineer designs and builds the fiat-and-stablecoin clearing system end to end — ledgering, reconciliation, and the integrations into banks, issuers, and custodians the rest of the product depends on. A deep payments seat for someone who has built payment infrastructure before and treats moving customer money as a serious responsibility.

**Responsibilities** - Design, build, and scale components of the money-movement / clearing system. - Build integrations with banks, stablecoin issuers, custodians, and partners — often across aging, fragmented APIs. - Own ledgering, reconciliation, and auditability so balances are always provably correct. - Build core product functionality that enables better stablecoin payments for customers. - Weigh in on broader architecture and bring insights the team doesn't yet have.

**Required Skills** A. 3+ years building deeply with payment systems, financial infrastructure, and/or banking integrations. B. Has scaled a payment system 0→1 (ideally also 1→10). C. Deep understanding of fiat payment rails (ACH, wires, RTP) plus ledgering, reconciliation, and auditing. D. Strong distributed-systems fundamentals — ships fast without sacrificing correctness or scale.

**Bonus Skills** - Stablecoin / blockchain familiarity (teachable here; not required). - Resilient integrations across legacy / fragmented financial APIs.

**Logistical Info** - Location: NYC, on-site 5 days/week. Not rigidly tracked, but candidates who lead with remote/WFH as a top requirement aren't a fit. - Compensation: $200K–$225K+ base + equity on a 6-year vest (outsized equity for early hires). - Work authorization: Visa sponsorship is fine. For sponsored candidates, flag the candidate's exact current visa status and the filing timelines they're expecting, so the team can plan. - Benefits/Other: Medical/dental/vision, unlimited PTO, periodic off-sites.

**Ideal Background** - Strongest signal — engineers who've built payments/ledger infrastructure at fintechs or payments companies (Stripe, Block/Square, Brex, Ramp, Modern Treasury, Plaid, Mercury, Adyen, Wise). - Also strong — high-performing mid/back-office engineers from hedge funds / trading firms (Jane Street, Citadel, HRT, Two Sigma) who've handled correctness and money movement at scale. - Also strong — top performers from big fintechs; FAANG is fine if systems-strong (payments can be learned). - Crypto/stablecoin experience is a plus, not a requirement. - Calibration: an exceptional systems engineer without direct payments experience is in scope — a strong systems engineer can learn the payments domain (per founder).

**Green Flags** - Treats moving customer money as a serious responsibility — security and correctness mindset. - High urgency and ownership; ships something useful in week one and connects it to where the product goes next. - Did real homework on TBMC before the conversation.

**Red Flags** - Lack of depth — knows how their last system worked but can't reason beyond it. - Lack of urgency / "plodding along" in a regulated-comfort zone. - Doesn't take money-movement responsibility seriously. - Remote-first as a non-negotiable; multiple very short stints.

**Interview Process** 1. Technical resume + culture-fit screen (~20 min), run in parallel. 2. Take-home. 3. Paid on-site work trial (2 days): Meeting with the team, paired programming and solo programming, shareback session the next day.