Engineering Team at Treasury Prime

If you love (or can learn to love) building a product that empowers developers and banks to build new products, then this is a good fit for you.

Banking can be a very dry subject, with many arcane corners, but doing it right is a powerful lever for change. We’re talking about modernizing 19% of the entire U.S. economy and that should excite you.

We’ve been working on this for five years now: our last company was purchased by Silicon Valley Bank and then we ran the API Banking group there for two more years. While at SVB we saw how a banking API built to serve all customers at scale could become the basis for the entire banking system in the US. This is an industry whose technology is still based on mainframes –– just imagine the impact modern technology could make.

We start with the basics: every team member is inherently worthwhile and we all deserve each other’s respect.

Companies are groups of people working together, trying to accomplish a common goal. A company can only reach its full potential when the people there all respect each other, listen to each other, and work together.

Each of us has experienced what it feels like at other companies when decision making is divorced from facts on the ground. When you are the expert and are not empowered to make important decisions or even sit at the table where they are made, it is extremely demoralizing. Not only does it stifle individuals at a company, but it is a sign of poor leadership that will likely make bad decisions, and eventually lead the company in the wrong direction.

We actively practice inclusion in all communications by practicing the following principles everyday:

• Everyone has a chance, and is encouraged, to speak once before anyone speaks twice. We encourage everyone to say what they are thinking.
• Assume good intentions. We remind ourselves that in all but the most outrageous cases, people want to do the right thing. When they act, they are trying to help.
• Utilize technology for inclusion, not exclusion. We practice email transparency and share all information (except when it specifically has to be confidential, i.e. HR information).

If we make our customer happy, we will be happy.

Our APIs allow companies to connect to banks. We consider both sides of the connection to be our customers, and it is our job to make sure both sides are happy.

At both banks and companies, we interact with a wide range of people, including CEOs, executives, project managers, engineers, and administrative staff. Each and every one is not only vital to our success, but also greatly impacted by what we’re implementing. If we don’t empathise with all of these people, and win them over as supporters and even promoters, we can’t succeed.

That’s why our customers have to come first. But how do we actually put them first?

• Our first, non-founder hire was our VP of Customer Success -- we consider it that important.
• Some conversations are best in person, and we travel to visit customers whenever they agree. By visiting their environment, meeting the whole team, eating in their cafeteria, we learn so much more than we can on the phone.
• We strive for efficient customer communications, fast responses directly between the people who have the information and are working on the issues, using the communications method most effective given the issues at hand.
• We’ve heard from many of our customers that they are tired of technology providers who take their money and then don’t really care if they achieve the desired results. We take that closely to heart, even to go so far as to structure our pricing so that if they don’t use our system, they don’t pay.

Even if you’re a great engineer, you’ll have to be a good team player too.

We work in a fast-paced, creative environment where everyone is expected to pitch in and solve problems together.

Our management philosophy can be summed up as: one team with each individual having the responsibility and authority to get their job done. That means that if your problem crosses departments, then it’s up to you to get help from the other department.

And of course, the reality is, now were so small, and we have so much to do. We don’t really have departments so much as we have people. Everyone works with everyone else so we can maximize our output.

We often solve problems that others haven’t solved before and need to come up with creative solutions that use our unique skill set.

Banking is something most people take for granted. Even business people think they know how it works. How hard could it be to integrate with bank software? It’s easy to open a checking account online, we can connect it to Mint... All that stuff is connected, right? Unfortunately, no.

In fact, banks and their customers in the US are often woefully behind, stuck using the first generation of web-enabled technology from 30 years ago.

We are attacking a problem that no one has tackled before, and we have a vision that is hard for some people to grasp. We’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper, it’s more like we’re starting with a tangle of multiple long pieces of yarn and trying to make a sweater. It takes some creativity (and bravery) to see the tangle, envision the sweater, and dive in to make it happen.

And we can’t do it alone. We need to help our customers have that vision too, in order to give us the access and information we need. We are challenged to innovate, share that nascent vision, create the solution, and then do it again.

We have great benefits, and buying you lunch is one of them.

We’re a small, lively team who honestly enjoy each other’s company. We reimburse your lunch on work days, and we love spending the time together to enjoy good food, unwind, and talk about world events, our lives outside of work, or that burning product issue we’re so passionate about.

Plans are fluid: sometimes we go out but mostly we bring food back to the office. Of course, participation is not mandatory, but we’ll miss you on the days you have other plans.

We have a long-term commitment to new learning and every new hire gets both a buddy/mentor.

We’re a very experienced team, much more so than the average startup, and we all regularly take on new roles and learn from each other. We’re committed to personal growth out of necessity, and also because we love it in our own lives. On a small, start-up team, you need people willing to try everything, and the team needs to create a safe place for people to try new things. We couldn’t get everything done any other way.

Our current, four-person team shares over 90 years of professional work experience, and each of us still seeks to gain insight and growth daily. There are few things more professionally gratifying then seeing a teammate accomplish something new, or better yet, helping them do it.

When you first join our team, you’ll be matched up with at least one mentor based on what we learn about you in our hiring and onboarding process. New employees meet one-on-one with their mentor weekly (and anyone else they’d like….). These meetings are just to run through the events of the day/week, and are often taken outside during short walks and coffee breaks.

We’re a good home to both experienced and new engineers.

The team is made up of experienced developers who all have had great success training less experienced engineers in the past.

Our team has trained and helped many junior engineers over our careers. We have taken a biologist who wanted to change careers, taught them functional programming, and seen them go on to have a great engineering career. We’ve helped someone with no startup experience transition from a sales role into product management (they’re now an A+ Product Manager). We’ve mentored a new grad into a QA engineering path. We can't teach you to have great analytical ability, but we can teach you the skills and tools to be a successful engineer.