Greenhouse ·
full-timeStaff Software Engineer - Services Platform
Mercury · San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Portland, OR, or Remote within Canada or United States
Mercury is a company in the financial technology sector that is moving beyond a core Haskell monolith to a collection of independent services. As product teams build and operate their own services, the organization faces new infrastructure challenges around service‑to‑service authentication, discovery, safe deployments, and observability. The Staff Software Engineer – Services Platform will act as a technical owner for Mercury’s services platform, defining the paved road for building, deploying, and operating services at scale. Day‑to‑day work includes designing and implementing shared infrastructure for identity, authentication, service discovery, and communication; shaping a Kubernetes‑based runtime architecture; creating self‑service observability tooling; collaborating with release engineering, security, and product teams to meet regulatory requirements; and mentoring engineers while driving adoption of platform patterns that keep operational complexity low as the service ecosystem grows. The role suits engineers with deep production Kubernetes experience, a background in service mesh or workload identity solutions, and a track record of building self‑service operational tools. Strong judgment about what to standardize, clear communication of trade‑offs, and the ability to align diverse teams without demanding unanimity are essential.
At its height, the Venetian Arsenal could produce ships at a speed that were mostly unmatched in its era. Its advantage was not simply that its craftspeople worked faster. Venice standardized the pieces around them. Parts, processes, and responsibilities became reusable enough that shipbuilding became stamp and repeat, not creating from scratch every time. Mercury's services ecosystem is reaching a similar transition. As more of Mercury moves beyond our core Haskell monolith, product teams are increasingly building and operating independent services. That gives teams more flexibility, but it also creates a new class of infrastructure problems. How should services authenticate to each other? How should they be discovered? What does a safe deployment look like? How does an engineer understand whether their service is healthy? And how do we answer those questions once, rather than asking every product team to build its own version? We’re looking for a Staff Infrastructure Engineer to become a technical owner for Mercury’s services platform. You’ll help define the paved road for building and running services at Mercury. This is a deeply technical role, but the hardest problems won’t be solved by writing code. You’ll need excellent judgment about what is worth standardizing, what should stay flexible, how quickly we can move, and how to bring a large engineering organization along with you. We see this role as the trailblazer for several more engineers to follow so the foundations and relationships you build across the org will pay off for those who come after! In this role, you’ll: Define and build the platform Mercury engineers use to deploy, operate, and evolve services. Own the strategy for service ecosystem at Mercury including identity, authentication, discovery and communication Work with product stakeholders and Release Engineering to create a paved deployment path with strong defaults for rollouts, rollbacks, configuration, secrets, and operational safety. Help evolve Mercury’s service runtime architecture, including our use of Kubernetes, while keeping existing services healthy through the transition. Make observability self-service so product engineers can understand and debug their systems without routing every question through Infrastructure. Partner closely with Release Engineering, Security, and product engineering teams to create infrastructure that is compliant with financial regulations and useful enough that teams actively want to adopt it. Find the highest-leverage gaps in our services ecosystem and ship pragmatic improvements instead of waiting for a perfect future architecture. Establish patterns that let Mercury support many more services without multiplying operational complexity at the same rate. Mentor engineers and shape infrastructure thinking beyond the systems you directly own. You should: Have deep experience operating Kubernetes in production and strong instincts around deployment architecture, failure modes, and migrations. Have designed or materially owned service-to-service authentication, workload identity, service discovery, service mesh, or related distributed-systems infrastructure. Have experience building self-service observability or operational tooling for application engineers. Have strong opinions about platform design, paired with the judgment to know when not to build something. Think of internal platforms as products. Adoption, ergonomics, defaults, documentation, and escape hatches matter alongside technical architecture. Be able to gain alignment across teams with different goals and perspectives without requiring unanimity or creating unnecessary friction. Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly enough that engineers understand both the decision and the reasoning behind it. Enjoy operating at the boundary between deep technical work and broad organizational leverage. Experience building an internal developer platform or service infrastructure at a scaled engineering organization would be particularly useful, but we care more about the systems you built, the decisions you made, and whether other teams successfully adopted them than the logo on your résumé. Mercury’s infrastructure is evolving rapidly every day. The service ecosystem is large enough that these problems are real, but young enough that a great engineer can still shape the fundamentals. If you want to build the standards that make the next fifty services feel far less exciting to operate than the first ten, we’d love to talk. *Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC. Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, o
| Role | Staff Software Engineer - Services Platform |
|---|---|
| Company | Mercury |
| Location | San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Portland, OR, or Remote within Canada or United States |
| Type | full-time |
| Compensation | Not disclosed |
| Posted | 2026-10-09 |
| Deadline | Rolling |
Typical process for this type of role
A general guide — the exact steps for this specific listing may vary; check the original posting for details.
- 1ApplicationSubmit your resume through the apply link.
- 2ScreeningRecruiter reviews your background against the role.
- 3AssessmentA technical test, assignment, or coding round, depending on the role.
- 4Interview(s)One or more rounds with the hiring team.
- 5OfferOffer letter with compensation and start date.
Before you apply
0/4Staff Software Engineer - Services Platform at Mercury: frequently asked questions
- What is the salary for this role?
- Mercury has not stated compensation in the listing. Check the original posting or ask during the application process.
- Is the Staff Software Engineer - Services Platform position remote, hybrid or onsite?
- The listing marks this role as remote, with San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Portland, OR, or Remote within Canada or United States as the location.
- What is the application deadline?
- Mercury has not listed a fixed deadline, so apply early in case the opening is filled.
- How do I apply for the Staff Software Engineer - Services Platform role?
- Use the Apply button on this page. It opens the original listing on job-boards.greenhouse.io, where you submit your application with the company.
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