Staff Engineer

Givebutter is the most-loved nonprofit fundraising and CRM platform, empowering millions of changemakers to raise more, pay less, and give better. Nonprofits use Givebutter to replace multiple tools so they can launch fundraisers and events, use donation forms and donor management (CRM), send emails and text blasts—all in one place. Use of the Givebutter platform is completely free with a 100% transparent tip-or-fee model.

Givebutter has been certified as a Great Place to Work® every year since 2021, and is the #1 rated nonprofit software company on G2 across multiple categories.

Our mission is to empower the changemaker in all of us. We believe giving should be fun, so you’ll want to do it again, and we also believe that work should be fun, so that you’ll have the greatest impact. We are excited to hear from talented people who want to work with other talented people in making the world a butter place—and have fun along the way. 

We're hiring a Staff 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 also have the opportunity to work closely with stakeholders across the company to help set the technical direction for Trust & Safety, and partner teams throughout Givebutter to prioritize and execute on it.

You’ll work day-to-day on our Payments and Trust & Safety team and collaborate closely with our engineering, operations, product and leadership team to solve ambiguous risk challenges into concrete solution.

This role spans the full breadth of how we fight fraud, from building decision systems and investigation tools to hardening our payment infrastructure and working with operations on process. It's as much about understanding the business as it is about writing great code.

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.

What You’ll Do

• Build the fraud platform. Design and implement fraud detection and risk decisioning systems, rule engines, scoring pipelines, event-driven risk signals, and backtesting infrastructure.

• Build for operators. Create investigation and review tooling that helps our Trust & Safety operations team triage, investigate, and resolve cases efficiently. You care as much about internal UX as external.

• Help shape what we build next. You'll work closely with your manager, product, operations and leadership 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 and grow the team. Help engineers on your team develop Trust & Safety domain expertise. Share what you know, pair on hard problems, and help raise the bar for how the team approaches adversarial challenges.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time spent in adversarial domains — fraud, trust & safety, risk, abuse prevention, or similar.

• Experience building fraud detection or risk decisioning systems — rule engines, scoring systems, policy frameworks, or investigation platforms. You've built the thing, not just consumed the output.

• 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.

• Collaborative influence. You've helped drive technical initiatives across multiple teams and stakeholders. You're comfortable building consensus and working through ambiguity with others.

• 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 projects or small teams as a senior IC (e.g., technical lead/staff-level leadership): setting direction, unblocking others, and mentoring.

• 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

Below is a high-level outline of our standard interview process

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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

4. Values Interview: A conversation with team members focused on how you align with our core values and leadership principles.

5. References: We connect with a few folks you’ve worked closely with to get a better picture of your working style and impact.

6. 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!