Staff Software Engineer - Compliance Platform

Who we are:

Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. Our integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Sardine’s platform is strengthened by one of the fastest-growing fraud consortiums in the market, spanning more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.

Our culture:

• We have hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, Toronto, and São Paulo. However, we maintain a remote-first work culture. #WorkFromAnywhere

• We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation.

• We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.

Location:

• Remote — United States or Canada. Given the strategic nature of this role, candidates should be comfortable traveling to San Francisco/Berkeley for in-person meetings with our leadership team approximately twice per quarter.

• From Home / Beach / Mountain / Cafe / Anywhere!

• We are a remote-first company with a globally distributed team. You can find your productive zone and work from there.

About the Role:

As a backend-focused Staff Software Engineer, you will own and lead the development of our compliance and financial crime prevention platform. This pivotal role involves designing, building, and maintaining critical systems that power KYC onboarding, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and regulatory reporting capabilities.

This multifaceted position involves developing new features at scale, driving technical strategy, refining internal tooling and processes, mentoring engineers, and assuming broad ownership across the platform. You will operate as a technical leader with influence beyond your immediate team, partnering with stakeholders across the organization to solve complex problems in a highly regulated domain.

The ideal candidate has a proven track record in building highly available APIs, robust data integrations, and leading technical initiatives from conception to delivery. Prior experience in the AML/CFT compliance domain is a plus, but not required.

What you’ll be doing:

• Architect, design, and implement robust, efficient, and reliable backend services for KYC workflows, sanctions screening engines, and alert management systems

• Build and optimize case management and alert creation pipelines that enable investigators to efficiently review and disposition suspicious activity

• Develop and maintain integrations with regulatory reporting systems, including SAR filing and GoAML submissions

• Collaborate closely with compliance stakeholders, product teams, and other engineering teams to translate regulatory requirements into scalable technical solutions

• Contribute to developing new features and capabilities that enhance detection accuracy, reduce false positives, and streamline investigator workflows

• Craft and maintain technical documentation for compliance systems, ensuring auditability and facilitating regulatory examinations

• Play a pivotal role in shaping our company's engineering culture, ensuring the maintenance of high engineering standards across the organization

What you’ll need:

• A minimum of 7 years of proven experience as a Software Engineer specializing in web backend development and complex system integrations

• A track record of successfully delivering high-quality production services, particularly those involving high-throughput data processing and real-time screening

• Proficiency in Golang is a significant advantage

Nice to Have:

• Experience in regulated industries such as financial services (AML/KYC), healthcare (HIPAA), background screening, payment security (PCI-DSS), or similar compliance-driven environments

• Familiarity with SAR/STR filing processes and GoAML or similar regulatory reporting formats

• Experience with case management systems, alert workflows, and investigation tooling

Benefits we offer:

• Generous compensation in cash and equity

• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested

• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture

• Flexible paid time off and Year-end break

• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific

• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific

• MacBook Pro delivered to your door

• One-time stipend to set up a home office — desk, chair, screen, etc.

• Monthly meal stipend

• Monthly social meet-up stipend

• Annual health and wellness stipend

• Annual Learning stipend

Join a fast-growing company with world-class professionals from around the world. If you are seeking a meaningful career, you found the right place, and we would love to hear from you.

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