Forward Deployed Engineer

For companies building financial technology and transforming the financial services space, the biggest bottleneck to their growth and innovation is often the underlying banks and infrastructure stack they rely on. We have spent our careers founding and scaling companies like Plaid, Square, Meta, Blend, and Affirm, and have seen this problem firsthand — builders and developers needing to partner with traditional banks, and creating API and abstraction layers over the patchwork that is the bank, its core, and many other vendors. All of this results in a complex (and often expensive) banking supply chain involving a user, fintech, BaaS middleware provider, bank, core and the Federal Reserve.

At Column, we set out to simplify and fix this. We are a bank and a software company built from the ground up, offering builders and developers technology-forward banking solutions that cut out the hundreds of vendors, middleware providers, and abstraction layers. This means a safer, more transparent, and less costly banking supply chain. Come build with us!

The opportunity:
We're a lean, experienced engineering team, and we're hiring our first Forward Deployed Engineer. You'll define what this role looks like at Column.

As an FDE, you'll work with customers to understand their problems in depth and help them build new products on Column's APIs. What you learn in the field will feed directly into how our engineering team improves the platform.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You'll write code, debug payment flows and design integrations, and you'll spend a lot of time on-site with customers. You'll get deep exposure to the full banking stack, from our APIs down to the Federal Reserve.

This role is based in our Presidio office in San Francisco, with frequent travel to customer sites in the US and abroad. You will report directly to William, the CEO.

Read more about Life @ Column and our hiring process here. 🚀

What you'll do:

• Work directly with our partner’s engineering teams to design, build and launch products with Column's state-of-the-art banking stack

• Act as the technical owner for strategic customers from onboarding to launch, unblocking them on architecture, ledgering, reconciliation and edge cases in money movement

• Write production-quality code, that speeds up integrations and grows into reusable product

• Turn patterns from the field into product and platform improvements, working closely with engineering to shape our APIs, docs and developer experience

• Advise customers on how to build safe, compliant and resilient financial products in a regulated environment

• Represent Column in conversations with customer executives and engineering leaders, and build trusted, long-term relationships

What we're looking for:

• Strong engineering fundamentals, ideally with experience in backend systems, APIs or infrastructure

• Product thinking: you look past the immediate ask to the underlying problem and the best solution, for the customer and for Column

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills. You can explain complex systems clearly to an engineer or an executive

• Executive presence and the confidence to lead high-stakes customer conversations

• Strong project management skills. You can run several customer engagements at once and keep each one moving

• A self-starter mindset. You're comfortable with ambiguity and with building process where none exists yet

• Experience with payments, banking or financial infrastructure is a plus

• Ideally fluent in either Spanish, French or Russian.

• 🏥 Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans, including options that are 100% covered by Column for you and 100% covered for your dependents!

• 🐣 Comprehensive family planning and fertility benefits via partnership with Carrot, including reimbursement of up to $20,000 in qualified expenses

• 🏡 Up to $2,000 (post-tax) monthly rent subsidy for employees living within 2 miles of Column’s office

• 💳 FSA and HSA account options to enable use of pre-tax money for medical and dependent care expenses

• 📈 401k plan, including self-directed brokerage options

• 🌴 Flexible time-off policy - take the time off that you want and need to relax and recharge

• 🧳 Sabbatical Program - Reach your 5-year anniversary to take up to 8 weeks of fully paid leave to rest, recharge, and pursue personal interest - with full salary and benefits

• 👶 100% paid parental leave, including 16 weeks for birth mothers, 12 weeks for primary caregivers, and 8 weeks for secondary caregivers

• 😇 Up to $4,500 in annual reimbursements for backup childcare

• 🍽️ Catered lunches and dinners for SF employees

• 🚆 Commuter benefits, including paid transportation to-and-from the office

• 🎉 Regular team building events, including annual offsite

Compensation packages at Column include base salary, equity, and benefits. New hire offers are made based on a candidate's experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

The annual US base salary range for this role is $130,000-$250,000 + equity.

Column is committed to working with the best and brightest people from the broadest talent pool possible. We value bringing together a team with different perspectives, educational backgrounds, and life experiences, and believe a diversity of ideas is what allows us to develop the best solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation during the application and recruiting process, please reach out to [email protected].

We participate in the E-Verify program in certain locations as required by law. Learn more about the E-Verify program here.