Senior Software Engineer, Trust & Safety

Role Description

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help build and evolve the systems that keep Givebutter safe — fraud detection, risk decisioning, abuse prevention, and the internal tooling our operations team needs to investigate and act at scale. This is a hands-on individual contributor role. You'll write code, design systems, debug production issues, and release new features. You’ll work day-to-day on our Payments and Trust & Safety team and collaborate closely with our engineering, operations, product team to solve ambiguous risk challenges into concrete solutions.

• Build the fraud platform.
  • Design and implement fraud detection and risk decisioning systems, rule engines, scoring pipelines, and event-driven risk signals.
  • Create investigation and review tooling that helps our Trust & Safety operations team triage, investigate, and resolve cases efficiently.
• Build for operators.
  • Help shape what we build next. You'll work closely with your manager, product, and operations stakeholders to identify where we're exposed, propose solutions, and help prioritize the roadmap.
  • Your domain expertise matters here — we want your perspective on what we should be doing.
  • Think like an adversary. Develop a deep understanding of fraud vectors in the fundraising and payments space: stolen cards, synthetic identities, friendly fraud, campaign abuse, and help us build systems that adapt as threats evolve.
• Strengthen payment integrity.
  • Work across our payment systems to harden the transaction lifecycle against abuse.
  • You don't need to be a payments expert on day one.
• Mentor those around you.
  • Help everyone on your team develop Trust & Safety domain expertise.
  • Share what you already know, what you’ve learned, and help unblock teammates through thoughtful code reviews.

Why join the Givebutter Engineering team?

• Democracy of code – We value equal contributions from all engineers and foster an environment of open discussion on architecture and ideas.
• Autonomy in work – We keep meetings to a minimum. Engineers have the freedom to manage their own calendars and block out uninterrupted time for focused work.
• Automated CI/CD – Our build and deployment processes are fully automated and hands-off, allowing engineers to focus on problem-solving through code.
• Mission-driven, full stop – You’ll be working with inspiring nonprofits, charities, and organizations that are making a positive impact around the world.

Requirements

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with experience in fraud, trust & safety, risk, abuse prevention, or adjacent domains.
• Experience building fraud detection or risk decisioning systems — rule engines, scoring systems, policy frameworks, or investigation platforms.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals. You can design scalable, event-driven systems and reason about distributed architecture tradeoffs.
• You've debugged production issues across multiple layers of the stack.
• Stakeholder partnership. You partner closely with end-users and cross-functional stakeholders to discover problems, validate solutions, and iterate based on feedback. You communicate clearly, ask good questions, and help turn ambiguous needs into shippable work.
• Good judgment and prioritization. You can take a vague problem like "our dispute rate is climbing" and work with your team to break it down into a concrete plan with clear next steps.

Nice to Have

• Experience with PHP/Laravel, or a similar MVC framework like Ruby on Rails, Django, etc. Laravel experience is a plus, but strong fundamentals in any comparable framework translate well.
• Experience leading a project or feature area end-to-end.
• Experience with React/TypeScript on the frontend.
• Familiarity with Stripe's APIs, payments, disputes, Radar, or similar payment processor integrations.
• Experience building tools for operations or support teams (internal tooling, case management, review queues).
• Background in fundraising, nonprofit tech, or marketplace platforms where T&S challenges involve campaign legitimacy, donor protection, or platform abuse.
• Exposure to event-driven architectures (CDC, Kafka, event sourcing) for real-time risk signal processing.
• Experience working in AWS (EKS/Kubernetes, RDS, etc.).

Benefits

• Remote Work: Work remotely from one of our 10 hubs (Austin, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Nashville).
• Health Insurance: We offer Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance covered 100% for employees as well as HSA and FSA accounts.
• Dependent Care Coverage: We offer coverage for dependents, with 50% of Medical, Dental, and Vision premiums covered for all eligible dependents.
• Mental Health: Givebutter health insurance plans come with access to a TalkSpace membership.
• 401k: We offer a 3% 401k match for all eligible employee's.
• Vacation and Holidays: Givebutter offers a Flexible PTO policy with uncapped vacation days and company-recognized holidays.
• Wellness Week: Givebutter closes for one week each summer to prioritize rest and recharge for the entire team.
• Parental Leave: We offer 12 weeks of paid leave for all parents and comprehensive leave planning management through Aidora.
• Family Care Support: Access a company-paid UrbanSitter membership plus care credits to book trusted, background-checked caregivers for childcare, senior care, pet care, and household support when you need it most.
• Home Office Stipend: Upgrade your home office with company-sponsored expenses, including high-quality laptops, monitors, and modern technology.
• Coworking Stipend: Enjoy a monthly stipend that gives you the freedom to work from coworking spaces or cafés whenever you need connection, community, or a change of scenery.
• Charitable Giving: Employees are encouraged to donate up to $50/month to any verified nonprofit they wish to support on Givebutter.
• Professional Development: We offer learning and development reimbursement opportunities.
• Love What You Do: We are a mission-driven company serving the charitable sector. Feel good about the work you're doing and the company you work for.

Interview Process

• Recruiter Screen: A 30-minute conversation to learn more about your background, walk through the role, and ensure mutual alignment on expectations, values, and logistics.
• Hiring Manager Interview: A deeper dive into your relevant experience, skillset, and working style. This is your first opportunity to connect directly with the person who may be your future manager.
• Assessment (technical or non-technical): This stage will vary based on the role. It could involve a live coding session, case study, or take-home project. Some roles may include two parts to this stage to evaluate both practical skills and problem-solving approaches.
• Values Interview: A conversation with team members focused on how you align with our core values and leadership principles.
• References: We connect with a few folks you’ve worked closely with to get a better picture of your working style and impact.
• Offer: If all goes well, we’ll move to the offer stage!

Please note, we will have an AI note-taking tool join most of our interviews. Hi potential new butterslice! A recent study from LinkedIn showed that most women apply to jobs only when they meet 100% of the requirements, whereas men will hit the apply button if they hit 60%. Givebutter is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. So to the women and nonbinary folks out there feeling unsure if you're a perfect fit, we strongly encourage you to apply!

Compensation Range: $170K - $190K