Staff Software Engineer

Here at Lower we believe homeownership is the key to building wealth and were making it easier and more accessible than ever. As a mission-driven fintech we simplify the home-buying process through cutting-edge technology and a seamless customer experience.

With tens of billions in funded home loans and top ratings on Trustpilot (4.8) Google (4.9) and Zillow (4.9) were a leader in the industry. But what truly sets us apart Our people. Join us and be part of something bigger.

Job Description:

LowerOS is our modern operating system that powers Lowers digital mortgage and home finance experiences end to end. Our platform helps borrowers move from first inquiry to clear-to-close with less friction by unifying application underwriting and closing tools into a single cohesive workflow for our sales operations and servicing teams.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the LowerOS team you will lead the design and evolution of the core services systems and architectural patterns that power Lowers digital mortgage platform end to end. You will shape the core services and features that make getting a mortgage feel simple transparent and humanso more people can build wealth through homeownership. Youll operate as a technical leader across teams helping scale our platform mentor engineers and drive high-impact technical initiatives that improve both developer effectiveness and customer experience.

This is an opportunity to join a fintech company redefining the mortgage industry by combining data-driven insights with thoughtful user experiences. Youll work on impactful projects collaborate with a talented team and help us build scalable systems that directly improve how people achieve one of lifes biggest milestonesowning a home.

Work Location: Hybrid in either Columbus OH (preferred); Austin TX; or Denver CO

Work Type: Full-time W2 employment visa sponsorship is not available for this position at this time.

What youll do:

Technical Skills

• System design & architecture: Lead the design and evolution of scalable reliable and maintainable distributed systems driving architectural decisions across teams while balancing performance cost complexity and long-term platform scalability.
• Code quality & testing: Strong in unit integration end-to-end testing and test automation frameworks.
• Performance optimization: Proficiency in profiling debugging and optimizing application performance.
• DevOps & CI/CD: Experience with deployment pipelines monitoring observability and release management.
• Security awareness: Knowledge of secure coding practices threat modeling and compliance requirements.
• Data & APIs: Comfortable designing and consuming APIs working with databases and handling data modeling.
• Tooling automation & AI-assisted development: Skilled at improving developer workflows through automation (build systems config management test infrastructure) and modern AI-assisted engineering tools such as Cursor Claude Code Codex or similar technologies to accelerate development debugging testing and documentation workflows.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Stakeholder communication: Partner with engineering product and business leaders to translate strategic business initiatives into scalable technical solutions clearly communicating tradeoffs risks and long-term architectural considerations.
• Mentorship: Coach junior and mid-level engineers providing guidance on coding practices system design and career development.
• Code review: Promote best practices in readability maintainability and scalability through constructive code reviews providing guidance and support.
• Engineering influence: Lead through technical influence mentorship and collaboration rather than direct authority helping elevate engineering quality and decision-making across the organization.
• Cross-functional technical leadership: Drive alignment and technical execution across multiple engineering teams fostering collaboration reducing organizational friction and promoting shared engineering standards and best practices.

Project & Execution

• Technical program ownership: Lead large ambiguous or cross-functional technical initiatives from architecture through delivery ensuring scalability reliability and long-term maintainability across systems and teams.
• Risk management: Identify risks early (technical debt bottlenecks scalability limits) and propose mitigations.
• Tradeoff negotiation: Weigh cost scalability and performance when evaluating solutions and clearly explain reasoning.
• Documentation: Produce and maintain high-quality technical documentation for systems processes and decisions.
• Organizational unblocker: Proactively identify and resolve technical operational or coordination roadblocks impacting engineering teams improving delivery velocity and cross-team effectiveness.
• Continuous improvement: Identify systemic engineering bottlenecks operational inefficiencies and architectural gaps driving initiatives that improve developer productivity platform reliability and organizational scalability.

Strategic Impact

• Technical vision: Influence long-term technical direction helping shape architecture and tech stack decisions.
• Technical leadership across teams: Serve as a technical leader across multiple engineering teams helping establish architectural patterns engineering standards and shared platform direction.
• Innovation: Proactively identify opportunities for new technologies frameworks or approaches that benefit the business.
• Quality bar setting: Advocate for engineering excellence ensuring the team balances speed with maintainability.
• Institutional knowledge & platform stewardship: Develop deep expertise in Lowers systems infrastructure and domain workflows helping teams navigate technical complexity and make informed architectural decisions.

Who you are:

• 8 years of professional experience in software engineering including experience designing and scaling enterprise-grade web applications and distributed systems (or closely related fields).
• Full-stack expertise with proven ability to deliver high-quality backend and front-end solutions.
• Problem solver and innovator with a track record of implementing new ideas and tackling complex technical challenges in design and architecture.
• Proficiency in our stack TypeScript React AWS and Postgres or the ability to quickly learn new languages frameworks and tools.
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted software development tools (such as Cursor Claude Code Codex GitHub Copilot or similar) to improve engineering productivity code quality debugging testing and developer efficiency.
• Strong computer science foundations including algorithms data structures concurrency parallelism asynchronous programming networking and system design.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams lead architectural initiatives and operate effectively in ambiguous or rapidly evolving environments.
• Strong track record of mentoring engineers scaling engineering best practices and improving technical decision-making within growing organizations.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skillssomeone who brings strong opinions held loosely engages debate without ego gives and receives feedback constructively and helps foster a supportive engineering culture. Were looking for someone people want to design alongside.
• Prior experience in fintech lending or consumer financial products is a plus but not required.

What youll get:

• Extended benefit offerings including medical/dental/vision parental leave life insurance short- and long-term disability
• Paid holidays and paid time off
• 401K with company match
• Discount on home mortgage refinances or purchase

Lower provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race color religion age sex national origin disability status genetics protected veteran status sexual orientation gender identity or expression or any other characteristic protected by federal state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment including recruiting hiring placement promotion termination layoff recall transfer leaves of absence compensation and training.