Distinguished Software Engineer

Act as a company-wide technical authority shaping Circle’s core platforms, distributed systems, engineering strategy, and long-term architectural direction.

Engineering at Circle

Circle is a financial technology company at the epicenter of the emerging internet of money—where value can move globally, nearly instantly, and more efficiently than legacy settlement systems. This new internet layer unlocks powerful opportunities across payments, commerce, and markets, helping raise global economic prosperity and advance financial inclusion.

Our infrastructure—including USDC, a blockchain-based digital dollar—enables businesses, institutions, and developers to build on a pivotal evolution in money and technology.

Circle is committed to transparency, stability, and trust in everything we do. As we grow globally across some of the world’s strongest regulatory jurisdictions, speed, reliability, and execution excellence are critical to our success. Our culture is grounded in four core values—Multistakeholder, Mindfulness, Driven by Excellence, and High Integrity—which guide how we build, collaborate, and lead.

Circlers operate in a distributed, remote-first environment that values flexibility, diverse perspectives, and shared ownership. New ideas are encouraged, and everyone is a stakeholder in Circle’s success.

Responsibilities

• As a Distinguished Engineer at Circle, you will drive the long-term technical direction of Circle’s platform and core systems, shaping architectures that scale across products, teams, and regulatory environments. You will lead complex, cross-cutting engineering initiatives that span multiple organizations, influencing architectural decisions well beyond a single team. Acting as a trusted technical authority, you will set a high bar for system reliability, performance, security, and developer experience while mentoring senior engineers and contributing to Circle’s engineering standards, culture, and technical strategy.

• Design, evolve, and steward core platform architectures to ensure scalability, reliability, and long-term resilience.
• Drive architectural direction and technical strategy for critical distributed systems used across Circle’s product ecosystem.
• Lead cross-team, cross-functional technical initiatives in partnership with Engineering, Product, Infrastructure, Security, and Compliance.
• Provide deep technical leadership and mentorship, elevating system design quality and engineering rigor across teams.
• Identify and address platform-wide technical debt, architectural risks, and systemic bottlenecks.
• Influence engineering-wide best practices in observability, reliability, performance, and developer experience.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor across the company, contributing to major technical decisions and long-term platform evolution.
• Champion innovation, knowledge sharing, and engineering excellence as a senior technical thought leader at Circle.

Requirements

• Core Requirements
• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including deep expertise designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Proven track record of architecting and scaling platform systems that support multiple downstream products and teams.
• Ability to set long-term technical direction while making pragmatic, high-impact execution decisions.
• Extensive experience operating critical, highly available systems with strong observability, reliability, and performance practices.
• Exceptional system design skills, with the ability to debug and resolve complex issues across services and architectural boundaries.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with demonstrated influence on technical direction beyond immediate teams.
• Preferred Requirements
• Experience building internal developer platforms or shared services adopted broadly across an organization.
• Familiarity working in regulated, compliance-heavy, or security-sensitive environments.
• Track record of shaping engineering-wide practices, tools, or standards as a recognized technical leader.

Compensation

Base salary: $285K – $352.5K

How to Apply

Apply through the official job page.