Sr. Engineering Manager

About Betterment

Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing, savings and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses.

Our team is passionate about our mission, to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (four days/ week in-office, with no required office days during the summer and winter holidays).

About the Role

As an Engineering Manager in Broker Dealer, you'll help balance on-time delivery of new features alongside system stability and scale, all while helping mentor and grow a team of talented engineers. Broker Dealer is the core of the Betterment platform.

On a busy day, we securely move millions of dollars through the Betterment system and ensure each transaction flows through a complex series of risk checks for strict regulatory compliance. Every ounce of efficiency and intelligence we pour into this system translates into more value for our customers.

We’re looking for an Engineering leader to contribute to answering our most difficult backend scaling, software design, and optimization questions. This role will be overseeing a team of individual contributors, and will work closely with other engineering managers in Broker Dealer.

While we don’t expect you to code on a daily basis, we do expect you to quickly familiarize yourself with the tech stack, codebase and specific business domains so that you can better support the team’s mission and deliver meaningful business impact.

This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees.

New York City: $210,000-245,000

This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus.

A Day in the Life

Manage a team of 6-8 backend engineers who build innovative trading technology that powers our investing products.

Foster career development and align roadmap opportunities with each engineer’s growth interests, keeping them technically engaged.

Cultivate a team culture that values agility, accountability, constructive feedback, and celebrates successes.

Be a hands-on technical mentor by regularly diving into the codebase, participating in code reviews, partnering with stakeholders to shape solutions, and driving effective technical decision-making.

Champion maintainability and reliability by advocating for the long-term stability of the technology your team builds.

Balance the need for speed of delivery with the importance of correctness and quality in every project your team undertakes.

Continuously refine team processes and practices to deliver high-impact, high-quality outcomes for the business and ensure the appropriately engineered solutions.

Develop deep domain and industry knowledge to be a highly effective partner across internal and external stakeholders.

Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, Legal and Compliance teams to ensure we consistently deliver the right sized solutions to the right problems.

What We're Looking For

3+ years of experience in formal Engineering Management of direct reports.

8+ years of experience in building and maintaining backend distributed systems using Java or a similar strongly typed programming language.

Experience managing, mentoring, and inspiring talented engineers, guiding them toward excellence in both professional growth and project outcomes.

A proven track record to rapidly close knowledge gaps, enhancing productivity and establishing trust within the organization.

A history of fostering accountability and ownership, motivating teams to take initiative and consistently deliver right sized solutions.

Experience cultivating high-performing teams that focus on speed of execution and the rigor to maintain quality.

Ability to adjust leadership style to meet the evolving needs of the team and the business.

Effective collaborator capable of working with other engineering teams, product managers, subject matter experts, non-technical stakeholders and third party vendors to build and ship high quality software.

Ability to translate business strategy into Engineering initiatives that drive delivery of meaningful outcomes.

Join a team built on these core values

We change lives

Be a part of a community of innovators working to transform financial outcomes for real people. Your work will make an impact, always laddering up to our mission; to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease .

We set audacious goals

We set them for the company, our customers, and ourselves, and we won’t stop until we reach them. We don’t just show up; we give our all, then celebrate our wins.

We value all perspectives

When we collaborate, we're at our best. We believe diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes and strive to uphold our supportive and inclusive community.

We simplify financial services

We’re financial services pioneers, always finding new ways to improve, optimize, and enhance. Constant improvement is in our DNA.

Our Commitment to Your Total Well-being

We offer a competitive suite of benefits , including medical, dental, and vision coverage; life and AD&D insurance; short- and long-term disability; infertility support and WPATH-aligned transgender health benefits; an Employee Assistance Program (EAP); transit benefits and FSA and HSA options

Ownership: Equity for all employees, including new hire and refresher grants.

Time: Flexible paid time off, paid parental leave, and a fully paid four-week sabbatical in your sixth year.

Growth: Company-paid professional coaching for all employees.

Wealth: Day-one 401(k) match plus matching on qualified student loan payments.

What happens next

We’ll take a few weeks to review all applications. If we’d like to spend more time with you, we’ll reach out to arrange next steps, which will include 3-4 sets of meetings with your future colleagues.

In the interview process, we’ll look to learn more about your skills, experiences, capabilities, and motivators. Many of our questions will be aimed at understanding how you might operate here at Betterment. Depending on the role, we may ask you to complete a case study exercise or technical assessments, as we want to collect a robust set of data points to better inform our decisions.

On average, it takes us around 3-5 weeks to make a hiring decision, depending on your availability and sense of urgency. As a best practice, we aim to interview at least 2-3 final round candidates before making a hiring decision. Please note that, as we usually receive an overwhelming number of applications for open positions, we’re unable to offer individual feedback during the interview process.

We recognize that interviewing for a new role is a big deal. We appreciate you considering Betterment as the next step in your career, and our Recruiting Team is here to support and advocate for you through the interview process!