Senior Software Engineer (Chicago)

About the role

Chime Engineering is growing rapidly as we scale to meet the financial needs of our members. We're looking for driven engineers with strong leadership skills to help evolve our risk architecture, enabling deeper insights and stronger protections for our members.

As a Senior Engineer, you’ll provide technical leadership to the team, helping drive the modernization of one of our Chime Platforms within Trust & Safety. Your work will ensure a secure, seamless, and frictionless experience for our members. You’ll lead key projects end-to-end by setting technical direction, shaping system architecture, mentoring engineers, implementing APIs, collaborating with data engineers and analysts, and ensuring the reliability and performance of the platform—while also contributing to other team initiatives as needed.

The base salary offered for this role and level of experience will begin at $164,000 and up to $227,000. Full‑time employees are also eligible for a bonus, competitive equity package, and benefits. The actual base salary offered may be higher, depending on your location, skills, qualifications, and experience.

In this role, you can expect to

• Drive technical design and architectural decisions, while mentoring engineers and fostering cross‑functional collaboration
• Lead and contribute to multiple projects simultaneously, balancing ownership of key initiatives with support across broader team efforts
• Build and maintain robust, low‑latency APIs and backend services that power our Trust and Safety platforms
• Become the domain expert in our platform architecture, providing technical decisions and solutions to refine our maturing platforms
• Partner with data engineers, analysts, and product managers to ship impactful features that enhance member protection and experience
• Improve platform reliability and performance through thoughtful system architecture, observability practices, and automation
• Evolve our experimentation, policy lifecycle, and ML integration capabilities to support smarter and faster decision‑making at scale

To thrive in this role, you have

• 5+ years of experience developing software in a production environment at scale
• Prior experience serving as a technical lead for a team and on complex projects—driving architectural decisions, coordinating execution, and aligning cross‑functional teams
• Proven experience with Ruby on Rails or comparable frameworks
• Experience with transactional databases and caching systems
• Deep understanding of architectural patterns for large‑scale web applications
• Commitment to mentoring engineers and fostering team development
• An appreciation of maintainable and well‑tested code
• Curiosity and passion for diving deeply into system architectures and technical challenges
• Experience in fast‑paced or early‑stage environments is a strong plus

What we offer for our full‑time, regular employees

• Our in‑office work policy is designed to keep you connected—with four days a week in the office and Fridays from home for those near one of our offices, plus team and company‑wide events depending on location. Whether you’re coming in regularly or are part of our fully remote program, you’ll stay engaged with your work and teammates.
• In‑office perks including backup child, elder, and/or pet care, plus a subsidized commuter benefit to support your regular commute
• Competitive salary based on experience
• 401k match and great medical, dental, vision, life, and disability benefits
• Generous vacation policy and company‑wide Chime Days, bonus company‑wide paid days off
• 1% of your time off to support local community organizations of your choice
• Annual wellness stipend to use toward eligible wellness related expenses
• Up to 24 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents and 12 weeks of paid parental leave for non‑birthing parents
• Access to Maven, a family planning tool, with $15k lifetime reimbursement for egg freezing, fertility treatments, adoption, and more.
• In‑person and virtual events to connect with your fellow Chimers—think cooking classes, guided meditations, music festivals, mixology classes, paint nights, etc., and delicious snack boxes, too!
• A challenging and fulfilling opportunity to join one of the most experienced teams in FinTech and help millions unlock financial progress

We know that great work can’t be done without a diverse team and inclusive environment. That’s why we specifically look for individuals of varying strengths, skills, backgrounds, and ideas to join our team. We believe this gives us a competitive advantage to better serve our members and helps us all grow as Chimers and individuals.

Chime is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital or family status, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis under provincial, federal, state, and local laws, regulations, or ordinances. We will also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of state and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Cook County Ordinance, NYC Fair Chance Act, and the LA City Fair Chance Ordinance, and consistent with Canadian provincial and federal laws. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation during any stage of the application process, please contact: [email protected].