Staff Backend Engineer, Custody Core (Crypto Security)
SoFi is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer, Custody Core (Crypto Security) in San Francisco, Seattle and New York, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on SoFi.
Level's read on this job
- Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: aI is not part of the work.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Blockchain, Distributed Systems and API.
- Level classifies it as a senior role.
- Level lists 55 other open roles at SoFi.
AI in this role
Design and develop backend services and infrastructure for SoFi's digital asset custody platform.
Employee Applicant Privacy Notice
Who we are:
Shape a brighter financial future with us.
Together with our members, we’re changing the way people think about and interact with personal finance.
We’re a next-generation financial services company and national bank using innovative, mobile-first technology to help our millions of members reach their goals. The industry is going through an unprecedented transformation, and we’re at the forefront. We’re proud to come to work every day knowing that what we do has a direct impact on people’s lives, with our core values guiding us every step of the way. Join us to invest in yourself, your career, and the financial world.
The role
We are looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to help build the next generation of SoFi's digital asset custody platform. This engineer will design and develop the core services that power secure custody, blockchain transaction processing, wallet infrastructure, and institutional digital asset products.
This role sits at the center of crypto infrastructure, working closely with Security, Platform Engineering, Product, Treasury, and Operations to build highly available systems responsible for protecting customer assets.
The ideal candidate enjoys solving distributed systems problems, designing resilient APIs, and building financial infrastructure where security and reliability are first-class requirements.
What you’ll do:
- Design and build backend services supporting SoFi's digital asset custody platform
- Develop secure transaction orchestration services for deposits, withdrawals, transfers, staking, and treasury operations
- Build integrations with custody providers, blockchain infrastructure, and institutional settlement networks
- Design APIs supporting retail and institutional crypto products
- Develop services supporting wallet lifecycle management and blockchain interactions
- Improve platform resiliency through redundancy, disaster recovery, observability, and automated recovery mechanisms
- Optimize transaction throughput while maintaining strict security controls
- Build scalable event-driven architectures supporting blockchain state changes and transaction processing
- Partner closely with Security Engineering to implement cryptographic controls and authorization workflows
- Collaborate with Product and Infrastructure teams to deliver new digital asset capabilities
What you’ll need:
- 7+ years of backend software engineering experience
- Strong experience with applied cryptography, key management architectures (HSMs, KMS), or Multi-Party Computation (MPC) protocols.
- Proven experience building high-stakes financial transaction systems (e.g., trading engines, payment rails, digital asset wallets) with a zero-trust, security-first mindset.
- Strong understanding of blockchain fundamentals, transaction signing lifecycles, and wallet architecture.
- Strong experience with distributed systems and cloud-native architectures
- Experience building highly available production services
- Strong understanding of REST APIs, asynchronous messaging, and event-driven systems
- Experience with AWS or comparable cloud platforms
- Experience with PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, or similar technologies
- Strong understanding of CI/CD and modern software development practices
- Excellent debugging and production incident response skills
Nice to have:
- Experience working with digital assets or blockchain infrastructure
- Experience integrating with custody platforms such as Fireblocks, BitGo, or Anchorage
- Experience building financial services infrastructure
- Familiarity with blockchain transaction lifecycle and wallet architecture
- Experience designing secure approval workflows
- Understanding of distributed consensus and cryptographic systems
- Experience supporting institutional financial platforms
How we rate this
Staff Backend Engineer, Custody Core (Crypto Security) at SoFi rates 10 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where backend engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where system design was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where security was part of your work. What did you do?
- What's a project where you used Blockchain hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used Distributed Systems in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Backend Engineering, System Design, Security, Blockchain, and Distributed Systems. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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