Staff Software Engineer

At Shakepay, we’re on a mission to usher in the Bitcoin golden age. We’re reimagining financial services to give every Canadian their fair shake.

Our culture is built around doing work that matters, winning as a team, and celebrating success. If you're the kind of person who values growth, shipping fast, and sharing your ideas openly with a group of like-minded people, come and build with us!

About Shakepay

Since 2015, we’ve been building the Shakepay app to make buying and earning bitcoin fast, easy, and secure. In 2022, we launched the Shakepay Card, allowing shakers to earn bitcoin rewards when they shop. Today, more than one million Canadians use Shakepay to grow their bitcoin savings and take control of their financial future.

We’re regulated across all Canadian provinces and territories, and backed by renowned venture capitalists with a funding of $44M. We have a passionate, loyal, and growing community, and we’re looking for people who want to help us build something truly special.

About the role

Although we don't have a specific immediate opening on the software engineering team, we are always on the lookout for exceptional people who are passionate about what we're building at Shakepay. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will work on product and platform systems that move real money and impact millions of users. You will collaborate closely with Product, Design, and other engineers to define problems, design solutions, and deliver them to production. You will be expected to operate with a high degree of ownership and judgment, from early design through launch and long-term reliability.

The base salary range for this position is $214,500 - $265,000 CAD. Actual compensation is determined based on skills, experience, and role level. Exceptional candidates may be considered above the top of the range, and pay can increase quickly for those who make a big impact in the role. Total compensation: In addition to base salary, this role includes equity compensation. We use clear job levels and market-based salary bands to ensure compensation is fair and consistent across the company.

In this role, you will:

• Take ambiguous, high-impact problems and drive them from idea to production.
• Partner closely with Product and Design to define scope, trade-offs, and execution plans.
• Design, build, and evolve production systems with a strong focus on reliability, correctness, and maintainability.
• Balance speed and quality, knowing when to move fast and when to slow down.
• Share ownership of the systems you build, including on-call responsibilities and incident response.
• Contribute to technical and product decisions that shape the direction of your team
• Help raise the bar for how the team builds by improving standards, tooling, and processes.

You likely bring:

• Strong product and customer judgment. You care about what is being built and why.
• Proven ownership of features or systems running in production, including reliability and on-call responsibility.
• Comfort working through ambiguity and making thoughtful trade-offs with incomplete information.
• A steady desire to improve your craft and the systems around you.
• Curiosity, pragmatism, and a bias for action.
• Active use of AI tools in your day-to-day workflow to accelerate development, debugging, and learning.
• Comfort reading legacy code and not immediately rewriting it all.

Technical experience

You likely have experience with several of the following:

• Backend development using Node.js and TypeScript
• Relational databases such as Postgres
• Operating production systems with observability and monitoring (eg. Datadog)
• Working in containerized or cloud-based environments
• Comfort reviewing AI-generated PRs with the same skepticism you’d apply to a human PR.

Nice to have, but not required:

• Mobile development with React Native
• Experience building financial, payments, or crypto-related systems
• Experience in high-growth or fast-moving product environments

Perks And Benefits

• 🤖 Generous AI token budget (currently unlimited)
• 🤝 Stock options as part of their total compensation
• 🦷 Full health and dental benefits, including a separate budget to take care of your mental health
• 🌎 Remote-friendly: Work from anywhere in Canada, with optional access to our office spaces in Montreal and Toronto.
• 🆙 A $2,000 annual budget for courses, certifications, and training to support your career growth.
• 🌴 20 days of vacation per year. And if you use all your vacation, we give you a $1,000 bonus.
• 🐣 Parental leave top up to 100% of your salary for 18 weeks.
• 🙌 Quarterly team-specific or company-wide offsite to connect with each other

The base salary range for this position is $214,000+CAD. Base pay may vary based on factors such as years of experience, skills and qualifications. Additionally, employees are eligible for equity, pay increases based on performance, benefits including health and dental care, and paid time off.

We understand that potential can be just as valuable as experience. If you're eager to learn, grow, and contribute to the mission but worry that you may not have the “right” experience, we still want you to apply.

We encourage applications from everyone, regardless of background and life experience. We’re firm believers that a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.

Fluency in English is required due to the percentage of English-speaking customers and the nature of our platform, which is available to all Canadians.

We use technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to support certain parts of our hiring process. This can include tools that assist with scheduling, application review, candidate communications, and generating interview notes, guides, or summaries so our team can stay focused on the conversation. All hiring decisions are made by our hiring team.