At NerdWallet, we’re on a mission to bring clarity to all of life’s financial decisions and every great mission needs a team of exceptional Nerds. We’ve built an inclusive, flexible, and candid culture where you’re empowered to grow, take smart risks, and be unapologetically yourself (cape optional). Whether remote or in-office, we support how you thrive best. We invest in your well-being, development, and ability to make an impact because when one Nerd levels up, we all do.

The Staff Software Engineer in Consumer Engineering is a hands-on engineer responsible for leading the execution of the team's most complex technical work across the full stack. This role owns the delivery of high-quality software at scale, setting the engineering standard and pace for the team. The Staff Engineer also brings a leadership multiplier to the team, partnering with Product and Engineering to inform technical direction, mentor those around them, and help the team operate at its best. They are a force multiplier whose contributions raise the bar of the team, set the pace and ultimately lead the team to success.

The Staff Software Engineer will be a technical leader and thought partner to the Engineering Manager, Product Manager, and partner teams, driving architecture decisions, roadmap planning, and engineering best practices. In this role you will work hands-on to build and maintain full-stack features and services. As someone who prides themselves on accountability, you will own production reliability for Consumer Credit Cards, taking ownership of setting up observability tooling, responding to incidents, and ensuring that alerts are properly in place for both technical and business failure events. You will leverage your experience and expertise in the field to mentor and coach other engineers on the team by technical guidance through code reviews, paired programming, and documentation as opportunities arise.

This role reports to the Senior Manager, Engineering.

Where you can make an impact:

• Lead the execution of the team's most complex technical initiatives across the full stack setting the engineering standards and pace for the team to follow.

• Lead technical design and architecture for complex features, documenting systems, identifying tradeoffs, and ensuring solutions are maintainable, scalable, performant, and production-ready (including observability, alerting, and web performance).

• Mentor and uplevel engineers through actionable code reviews, pair programming, and knowledge sharing; advocate for and improve the team's technical best practices.

• Partner with the EM and PM to collaboratively roadmap large tracks of work, break down business requirements into technical requirements, and help the team hit deadlines. Proactively manage stakeholders, communicate upward, and build cross-team influence.

• Participate in the team’s Pod Lead rotation, responding to incidents, serving stakeholder needs and being on-call via PagerDuty for a week at a time (roughly once every 4-6 weeks).

Your experience:

Technical Skills

• 8-10+ years of software engineering experience as a Full-stack web developer with a frontend bias

• Production experience at scale

• Strong expertise in React, TypeScript, Node.js and Next.js.

• Hands-on experience with observability tools (DataDog or similar)

• Deep knowledge of web performance (Core Web Vitals, caching, critical rendering path, static generation)

• Experience building REST APIs, GraphQL graphs and utilizing cloud services (Vercel & AWS or similar: GCP, Azure, etc.) to build backends and data systems

• Familiarity with utilizing AI software-development tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc. to accelerate development

• 1-2+ years experience as in a tech lead capacity

Behavioral Skills

• Ownership and accountability - comfort navigating ambiguity and operating without clear direction to take action and drive projects forward.

• Communication - skilled at translating complex concepts into language that resonates across varying levels of expertise.

• Collaborative - able to easily build relationships and trust with teammates across a variety of teams and disciplines

• Data-driven - preference to let data tell the story and validate assumptions through metrics tracking and testing

• Align and execute - you are able to facilitate technical discussions, drive decisions, and commit to outcomes even when they weren't the preferred choice.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Experience with organically driven/SEO-focused marketplace websites at scale

• A portfolio or Github profile highlighting their work experience, side projects, open-source contributions, etc.

• An online blog w/ technical writings, case studies and/or knowledge shares.

• Next.js 13+ experience, including App Router.

• Data analytics experience

Where:

• This role will be remote (based in the U.S.).

• We believe great work can be done anywhere. No matter where you are based, NerdWallet offers benefits and perks to support the physical, financial, and emotional well being of you and your family.

What we offer:

Work Hard, Stay Balanced (Life’s a series of balancing acts, eh?)

• Industry-leading medical, dental, and vision health care plans for employees and their dependents

• Rejuvenation Policy – Flexible Vacation Time Off + 11 holidays + holiday company shutdown

• New Parent Leave for employees with a newborn child or a child placed with them for adoption or foster care

• Mental health support

• Paid sabbatical after 5 years for Nerds to recharge, gain knowledge, and pursue their interests

• Health and Dependent Care FSA and HSA Plan with monthly NerdWallet contribution

• Monthly Wellness Stipend, Cell Phone Stipend, and Wifi Stipend (Only remote Nerds are eligible for the Wifi Stipend)

• Work from home equipment stipend and co-working space subsidy (Only remote Nerds are eligible for these stipends)

Have Some Fun! (Nerds are fun, too)

• Nerd-led group initiatives – Employee Resource Groups for Parents, Diversity, and Inclusion, Women, LGBTQIA, and other communities

• Hackathons and team events across all teams and departments

• Company-wide events like NerdLove (employee appreciation) and our annual Charity Auction 

• Our Nerds love to make an impact by paying it forward – Take 8 hours of volunteer time off per quarter and donate to your favorite causes with a company match

Plan for your future (And when you retire on your island, remember the little people)

• 401K with 4% company match

• Be the first to test and benefit from our new financial products and tools

• Financial wellness, guidance, and unlimited access to a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) through Northstar

• Disability and Life Insurance with employer-paid premiums

If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents linked here.

NerdWallet is committed to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We prohibit discrimination and harassment on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law, so all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.  

NerdWallet will consider qualified applicants with a criminal history pursuant to the California Fair Chance Act and the San Francisco Fair Chance Act, which requires this notice, as well as the Los Angeles Fair Chance Act, which requires this notice.

NerdWallet participates in the Department of Homeland Security U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services E-Verify program for all US locations. For more information, please see:

• E-Verify Participation Poster