The Senior Software Engineer will work on projects involving cloud infrastructure, fare scanner tools, and contactless payment risk management, while collaborating closely with a small engineering team.
Token Transit
About you
Projects:
About us
Token Transit is a fast-growing startup in the public transit technology space, focused on revolutionizing fare distribution and collection for public transit agencies. We let riders pay and ride with whatever is in their pockets - whether that’s their phone, student ID, credit/debit card, paper pass, smart card, and more. Our ticketing API is used by the biggest trip planners in the industry, including Transit App, Moovit and Google Maps.
Since 2015, Token Transit has grown to serve over 220 municipal and regional transit agencies across North America, including Miami, New Orleans, Minneapolis and Oakland. We believe that by building a single service that provides access to transit all across America we can lower the barrier to accessing transit and play a part in increasing transit ridership.
Our mission is to make public transit the first choice by making it the easiest choice. Our team is small but highly impactful, and we are looking for someone who thrives in a scrappy, high-growth environment where they can make an outsized impact. Check out tokentransit.com for more information.
We're mostly remote, with our main office based in San Francisco, CA. We don't have any expectations about where in the US you're located. We would love to see you in person in San Francisco, once or twice a year, for roughly a week at a time.
We are looking for a senior software engineer to join our 6-person engineering team. We are looking for someone who knows how to debug linux systems, and is otherwise a strong generalist, with strong product sense and willingness to tackle infrastructure-related problems. We are a remote team that works closely together, and hope that you are someone who can communicate your ideas effectively.
We don’t believe that there is one school or one degree that defines a great software engineer. We aren't looking to judge you based on how you got your skills. If this sounds interesting to you, we encourage you to apply.
We also hope you're enthusiastic about learning about the products we build. You don't need to be a public transit fanatic, but you will need to empathize with both the transit agencies and transit riders we serve.
Here are some examples of projects that you would be likely to work on at Token Transit:
Empower transit agencies with next-generation fare scanner (validator) maintenance tools
“Helping agencies help themselves” is one of the core values of our product. You will build better self-service tooling for agencies to manage the two-thousand validators on board their vehicles. The validators run Linux, and have intermittent network access. You’ll work with our Customer Success team to figure out the agency workflow, and then create self-service tools to troubleshoot common issues.
Expand support for student IDs
In some agencies, Token Transit lets students tap their high school ID to ride for free. Your role will involve developing better tooling to update the student roster, including major updates to the underlying validator communication protocol, as well as the necessary firmware changes to expand the program.
Automated risk management of contactless payments
Contactless fare payments process small transactions quickly, leading to risky transactions with high interchange fees. You will join the team working on the project to automate risk detection and then utilize various financial mechanisms, such as daily roll ups, to decrease interchange fees.
Streamline Cloud Infrastructure
Token Transit relies on Google Cloud for most of our infrastructure needs. As we grew the company, our setup has grown increasingly more complex, and there are a handful of critical projects around modernizing our infrastructure, cleaning up our alerting and monitoring and speeding up code deployment.
Something we haven't even thought of
One exciting part of working at an early stage startup is that, while we know many of the projects we're working on, there will always be surprises waiting for us.
Token Transit is currently a small team of twelve. Our roles are split between agency operations and engineering. We have a culture of collaboration, and autonomy in project ownership.
Our backend is written in Go and runs on Google Cloud. Our validators run software that is, similarly, written in Go. Our mobile apps are written in native code for each platform: Swift on iOS (with a little bit of Objective-C), and Kotlin on Android (with a bit of Java), and our webapps are mostly written in React and Typescript. We don't expect anyone to be an expert in most of the tools we work in and are ready to help get you up to speed.
We love public transit, and we are excited to help thousands of riders and civic employees. We are grownups, with our own lives outside of work, but we do have a lot of fun together. If any of this sounds interesting to you, please feel free to reach out -- and tell us some of your personal public transit stories and opinions in your application! Everything that you submit here will be read by an organic free-range human, who loves public transit and is excited to meet you.
Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
Public transit is overwhelmingly used by more people of color, more women, and more marginalized communities than other modes of transportation. We know it's important that the diversity and voices of our riders and transit agency customers are represented at the decision making tables at Token Transit. We encourage candidates of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, identities, and backgrounds to apply. Please don't hesitate to apply and share your story with us even if it feels like the requirements above don't quite fit.
Perks and Benefits
- Flat salary of $176,000 for most employees
- Comprehensive health insurance (medical, dental, vision)
- Remote or hybrid work options
- Flexible work environment and generous PTO
- Home office stipend
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- Stock options
- Opportunities for growth in a scaling start-up
- 401(k) plan
- Paid parental leave
- Weekly snack stipend
Similar Jobs
Artificial Intelligence • Big Data • Healthtech • Information Technology • Machine Learning • Software • Analytics
The Senior Software Engineer leads the design and development of scalable front-end applications using React and Node.js, while overseeing back-end service integration, performance optimization, and Agile practices.
Top Skills:
Aws Ai/Ml ServicesCi/CdCSS3DatadogDevOpsDockerHTML5JavaJavaScriptKubernetesNode.jsReactReduxRestful ApisSplunkSpring BootTypescript
Big Data • Consumer Web • Fintech • Mobile • Payments • Social Impact • Financial Services
Design, develop, and maintain high-performance microservices using Java and Spring Framework. Mentor junior engineers and drive technical projects.
Top Skills:
AWSGraphQLGrpcJavaSpring Framework
Computer Vision • Healthtech • Information Technology • Logistics • Machine Learning • Software • Manufacturing
The Senior Software Engineer will develop the ML Platform, build training pipelines, streamline ML lifecycle, and ensure deployment of generative models with reliability.
Top Skills:
BuildkiteGCPKubernetesPythonPyTorchTensorFlow
What you need to know about the Austin Tech Scene
Austin has a diverse and thriving tech ecosystem thanks to home-grown companies like Dell and major campuses for IBM, AMD and Apple. The state’s flagship university, the University of Texas at Austin, is known for its engineering school, and the city is known for its annual South by Southwest tech and media conference. Austin’s tech scene spans many verticals, but it’s particularly known for hardware, including semiconductors, as well as AI, biotechnology and cloud computing. And its food and music scene, low taxes and favorable climate has made the city a destination for tech workers from across the country.
Key Facts About Austin Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 180,500; 13.7% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Dell, IBM, AMD, Apple, Alphabet
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, hardware, cloud computing, software, healthtech
- Funding Landscape: $4.5 billion in VC funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Live Oak Ventures, Austin Ventures, Hinge Capital, Gigafund, KdT Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Silverton Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: University of Texas, Southwestern University, Texas State University, Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Texas Advanced Computing Center
