Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform

Human Interest is on a mission to ensure that people in all lines of work have access to retirement benefits.

More than half of all working Americans are not saving enough for their future. Too often, it’s because they are employed by a company that doesn’t offer a retirement plan. Human Interest is changing that by making it affordable and accessible for small and medium-sized businesses to offer employees a path to financial independence through retirement savings.

We’re a high-growth fintech company changing the retirement industry. We are backed by a number of investors. This includes funding from Marshall Wace and Baillie Gifford, as well as top investors such as BlackRock, TPG (The Rise Fund), SoftBank, Glynn Capital, NewView Capital, USVP, Wing, Uncork, and more.

About the role

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Data Platform team, you will build and operate the distributed systems and services that Human Interest's data platform runs on, at a pivotal moment in Human Interest's growth. This role exists to own the infrastructure and compute layer that moves data reliably at scale. You will drive the evolution of our data platform toward an architecture that scales for AI consumption and for Human Interest's next growth stage.

This is a software engineering role in the data domain. You will spend your time designing services, reasoning about failure modes, and tuning distributed compute rather than authoring analytics models. We are looking for engineers who have built production systems and moved into the data world, and who want to keep building systems there. This is a high-ownership role where your architectural decisions will have a direct and visible impact on Human Interest's capabilities.

About the team

The Data Platform team at Human Interest owns the data stack from ingestion and orchestration through transformation, governance, and delivery to BI tools. Our stack currently includes Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Meltano, and AWS. We're a small, highly collaborative team embedded within the HI Tech organization, working closely with Analysts, Finance, Product, and engineering teams to ensure that the data people rely on is trustworthy and accessible.

You'll shape how we evolve our architecture towards AI-consumption and to set the standard for how production data systems are built, deployed, and operated at Human Interest. The team actively uses AI tools as part of our development workflow, and we expect this role to help drive and expand that practice across the team.

What you get to do every day

• Design, build, and operate the distributed services and compute infrastructure behind our data platform, including containerized workloads on AWS ECS, autoscaling and resource sizing, and the orchestration layer that coordinates them.
• Own end-to-end design and development of scalable data pipelines and data-moving services, from ingestion and orchestration through transformation and delivery.
• Improve how event-sourced data moves from our production systems into our data infrastructure and back out to other systems.
• Participate in on-call for the data platform, and own production issues in distributed data systems end to end.
• Ensure participant and employer data is handled securely as it moves through the platform, including PII classification and masking, role-based access controls and least-privilege patterns, encryption and key management, lineage, and the audit trails our SOC 2 and regulatory obligations depend on.
• Lead the technical direction and evolution of our data platform as we move toward an AI-first data infrastructure. You will design for AI consumption, unstructured data access, and integration with AI tooling from the ground up, including the pipelines and infrastructure that support model and AI workloads running in production.
• Build the interfaces that data engineers, analysts, and AI systems use, and the systems that move curated data back out of the warehouse into production services and downstream tools.
• Mentor engineers and analysts and raise the technical bar across the team, setting the standard for testing, code review, and operational readiness on the data stack.

Required

• 5+ years of experience building and operating production software systems, with significant time spent on data-intensive systems such as data pipelines, data streaming platforms, and data infrastructure.
• Demonstrated experience designing distributed systems and services, with the ability to reason clearly about software concepts like concurrency, backpressure, idempotency, partial failure, and the tradeoffs between them.
• Hands-on experience running containerized workloads in production on AWS including scaling, resource sizing, and performance and cost tuning under real load.
• The ability to independently own and improve complex production systems, alongside the software engineering practices that go with them: automated testing, code review, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code such as Terraform.
• Experience with workflow orchestration at scale, including Airflow or equivalent tools.
• A strong desire to leverage AI tools and workflow automation as the primary way work gets done, not just to augment work.

Preferred

• Hands-on experience with event-sourced or append-only log systems, or with change data capture and streaming platforms (e.g. Kafka or Kinesis).
• Working knowledge of cloud data warehouse technologies, including Snowflake or equivalent, covering access control, performance tuning, and cost management.
• Experience getting machine learning models into production and keeping them healthy there. We are interested in the engineering side of ML in production rather than model development itself (e.g. serving infrastructure and monitoring).
• Experience with data lakehouse architectures and open table formats such as Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake.
• Experience building data infrastructure to support AI-driven data access, such as exposing data assets via MCP, implementing governance frameworks for AI data access, and curating, monitoring, and evaluating the quality of AI-generated query responses.
• Background in fintech, financial services, or another highly regulated or compliance-driven industry.

Why you will love working at Human Interest

Human Interest is tackling one of our country's biggest challenges - closing the retirement gap. You'll be instrumental in architecting and scaling solutions that bring financial security to employees at small and medium-sized businesses nationwide. We’ve made significant progress, but there is still growth ahead, offering you a unique opportunity to solve complex problems, drive innovation, and advance your career alongside a dedicated, mission-driven team.

We value hard work and recognize that our team's contributions are key to our continued success.

Join Human Interest and make a lasting impact by shaping the future of retirement.

Our operating principles define how we work together as a team. They reflect Human Interest’s unique view on what’s important and what’s right. Documenting this core aspect of our culture helps employees make good decisions on their own. It also helps candidates considering career opportunities critically evaluate whether they will thrive at Human Interest.

• Customer obsession: We're all about creating amazing experiences for our customers. We put their needs first and go the extra mile to make them smile.
• Long-Term Orientation: We're not just playing for today; we're building a legacy. We think big, plan strategically, and invest in our future.
• Autonomous and Accountable Teams: We trust our team members to take ownership and make smart decisions. We empower you to be your best self!
• An Escalating Bar for Talent and Performance: We're constantly raising the bar and challenging ourselves to be better. We believe in growth and continuous improvement.
• Fundamental Optimism: We see the glass as half full (and then we fill it up with more amazing ideas!). We believe in the power of positivity and the potential for greatness.

Compensation - At Human Interest, there are a number of factors that are used to determine the appropriate pay range for each position. We take into account the cost of labor for each position in various markets across the U.S. The base salary for this position spans $190,000 - $230,000 and represents the minimum in our lowest geographic region to a maximum in our highest geographic region. The salary we offer to a new employee within this range is based on their location within the U.S.

, their relevant job-related skills, and experience. At Human Interest, base salary is one component of the overall total rewards package. Depending on the position, additional compensation components such as bonuses, commissions, and equity may be offered. All of our employees are offered a robust suite of physical, financial, and mental wellness benefits. In compliance with applicable laws, we do not inquire about salary history, or about criminal history prior to a conditional offer of employment.

Benefits -

• A great 401(k) plan: Our own! Our 401(k) includes a dollar-for-dollar employer match up to 4% of compensation (immediately vested) and $0 plan fees
• Top-of-the-line health plans, as well as dental and vision insurance
• Competitive time off and parental leave
• Addition Wealth: Unlimited access to digital tools, financial professionals, and a knowledge center to help you understand your equity and support your financial wellness
• Lyra: Enhanced Mental Health Support for Employees and dependents
• Carrot: Fertility healthcare and family forming benefits
• Candidly: Student loan resource to help you and your family plan, borrow, and repay student debt
• Monthly work-from-home stipend; quarterly lifestyle stipend
• Engaging team-building experiences, ranging from virtual social events to team offsites, promoting collaboration and camaraderie.

We’re a great place to work (but don’t take our word for it)

Here’s a list of our awards and accolades

• Certified as a Great Place To Work® (2023-2025)
• Fortune Best Place to Work in the Bay Area (2024)
• Best Places to Work by Built In (2023-2024)
• America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes (2020-2022, 2024)
• A Top Company by Y Combinator (2020-2023)
• Inc. Fastest Growing Companies (2021)

Human Interest is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran or military status, pregnancy, or any other characteristics protected under federal, state, or local laws.

Employment with Human Interest is at-will, meaning either you or the company may terminate employment at any time, with or without cause or notice, except as otherwise provided by law or written agreement.

We are committed to making every stage of our application process fully accessible to all individuals. If you need a reasonable accommodation at any point in the process, please let us know at applicantaccommodations@humaninterest.com.

Protect yourself against fraud and identity theft. Apply to our open positions directly via our careers page on Greenhouse. Human Interest will never ask applicants for their financial or banking information as part of our application process. All legitimate communication will come from a @humaninterest.com email address. If you have questions, please reach out to us directly at careers@humaninterest.com

Please note Human Interest does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from candidates. We will not consider resumes from vendors, including and without limitation search firms, staffing agencies, fee-based referral services, and recruiting agencies.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider employment-qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. We comply with CCPA guidelines.