Column (https://column.com/) | San Francisco, CA (ONSITE) | Full Time | Software Eng (Infrastructure), Software Eng (Backend), Software Eng (Product)
Column is building the infrastructure that powers the US dollar globally. We're a software first company, but also own a nationally chartered bank that we've built from the ground up. We're currently processing trillions of dollars annually (yes, that's with a T), supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated companies out there like Wise, Bilt, Brex, Ramp, Mercury and dozens of others.
Started by the founder of Plaid (plaid.com), Column is focused on keeping an extremely lean and experienced team: currently 10 engineers that all report to the CEO. We are looking for an ambitious infrastructure, product, and backend engineer (one of each) that want to build incredible software from first principles.
Profitable and 100% owned by employees and founders.
Totally agree its a bit movie-plot-y, but the point of that example is to highlight something that (obviously) violates sanctions rules and would get flagged on a national security scale by governments.
The examples you listed would all be lower priority.
My belief is that people care more about things that affect them directly.
And this means your pro-control statements like "I pay a known enemy of state to fund a terrorist attack" are pretty abstract - do you know anyone who funds terrorists? Why would terrorists use US banks anyway, surely they use gold or drugs or something?
On the other side, your anti-control side ("I buy illegal drugs from a friend for personal use.", "I buy a ticket to a comedy show that makes fun of your government.") is much more relatable - I have friends who I know buy illegal drugs! I go to comedy shows! So despite stakes being much lower, the feelings are much stronger.
So if you want to get balanced view, it's important to keep local, relatable reasons for both sides. "30 emergency rooms were closed due to a ransomware cyber-attack, and government has no way to track the attackers" is a nice example of the locally relatable argument for "control" side. "Scammers stole all of the life savings from someone. Government has no way to get this money back" is another one.
How much prompt iteration did you do? I've noticed when building real world agentic apps that small prompt tweaks can make a huge difference in behavior (re: the reward hacking vs hallucinating). Would love to learn more about the approach here.
Hey, member of the benchmark team. We iterated on the prompts based on observed model behaviors. A few key examples:
Schema introspection: Models were spending significant tokens exploring the database structure through trial-and-error SQL queries, so we included the complete data model in the system prompt upfront.
Reward hacking: We added explicit instructions against gaming the reconciliation checks. This reduced the frequency initially, but models would eventually ignore these constraints.
Domain context: Including company background (YC-backed startup) substantially improved transaction categorization, particularly for startup-specific items like SAFE notes that require domain knowledge to classify correctly.
Column (https://column.com/) | Software Eng (Infrastructure), Software Eng (Backend), Software Eng (Product) | San Francisco, CA (ONSITE) | Full Time
Column is the first nationally chartered bank built from the ground up for developers. We provide an API first, modern banking experience for our customers, replacing the bloated middleware and legacy software that currently powers most financial companies.
Started by the co-founder of Plaid, Column has a team of 10 experienced engineers and is currently processing hundreds of billions in payments annually, supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated fintech companies. We are looking for ambitious infrastructure, product, and backend engineers that want to build the best-in-class banking tech from first principles. 2025 is lining up to be a huge year for us with lots of new features and high-scale customers, so it's an exciting time to join the team!
Column (https://column.com/) | Software Eng (Infrastructure), Software Eng (Backend), Software Eng (Product) | San Francisco, CA (ONSITE) | Full Time
Column is the first nationally chartered bank built from the ground up for developers. We provide an API first, modern banking experience for our customers, replacing the bloated middleware and legacy software that currently powers most financial companies.
Started by the co-founder of Plaid, Column has a team of <10 experienced engineers and is currently processing hundreds of billions in payments annually, supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated fintech companies. We are looking for ambitious infrastructure, product, and backend engineers that want to build the best-in-class banking tech from first principles. It's a fun time to join - we are scaling volume crazy fast while shipping tons of new features. To keep the team small we have a very high bar for talent, but if this sounds exciting would encourage you to apply!
Column (https://column.com/) | Software Eng (Infrastructure), Software Eng (Backend), Software Eng (Product) | San Francisco, CA (ONSITE) | Full Time
Column is the first nationally chartered bank built from the ground up for developers. We provide an API first, modern banking experience for our customers, replacing the bloated middleware and legacy software that currently powers most financial companies.
Started by the co-founder of Plaid, Column has a team of <10 experienced engineers and is currently processing hundreds of billions in payments annually, supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated fintech companies. We are looking for ambitious infrastructure, product, and backend engineers that want to build the best-in-class banking tech from first principles. We all work on high impact, independently driven projects - writing code for regulated financial infrastructure at scale.
CEO of Column here! Have hired a couple amazing people off of HN recently, feel free ping me 1:1 at william [at] column dot com or ping in the comments.
Column looks very good. The API first approach is something that has been absent from banks and financial institutes for a long time now. I have worked with a lot of established banks trying to integrate their payment systems with newer tech. I would love to work on stuff that Column is doing. Have sent an email to you Wiiliam.
As some one who has interacted with banks and worked at o e, I think it’s really cool what you’re doing. Banks (and other companies in the financial sector) are stuck in the 90s in a lot of ways.
Too bad it’s not remote, I would love to contribute to this.
Appreciate it - its a fun, but hard problem! Yeah we're pretty hardcore on in-person in SF, which I isn't optimal for most people. As we get larger we may get more flex :)
I have been working on something similar as a side project and would love to connect with you and chat more about this. I have already sent you an email. Thanks!
This looks awesome, I have had numerous issues with large banks messing up account settings/payment so looking forward to this growing. I don't want to clutter up the comments with questions I have about a role here so you should have an email.
You can apply to my company, Carebrain! Looking for a full stack founding engineer. Will support Canadians including TN status. See full job description and apply here https://wellfound.com/l/2AGnAW
I have been working on something similar as a side project and would love to connect with you and chat more about this. I have already sent an email and would like to have early access to the FedNow API for my project. Thanks!
There appears to be a bug on the Column.com contact form after signing up.
Number of employees is pre-populated with a range (e.g. 2-5) based on initial question, but trying to submit the contact form gives a NaN error with "Please match the requested format" but is not editable.
Column (https://column.com/) | Software Eng (Backend), Software Eng (Infrastructure) | San Francisco, CA | Full Time
Column is the first nationally chartered bank built from the ground up for developers. We provide an API first, modern banking experience for our customers, replacing the bloated middleware and legacy software that currently powers most financial companies.
Started by the co-founder of Plaid, Column has a team of <10 engineers and is currently processing hundreds of billions in payments annually, supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated fintech companies. We are looking for experienced backend and infra engineers to join our team. We all work on high impact, independently driven projects - writing code for regulated financial infrastructure at scale.
Column (https://column.com/) | Software Eng (Product), Software Eng (Infrastructure), Software Eng (Internal Tools) | San Francisco, CA | Full Time
Column is the first nationally chartered bank built from the ground up for developers. We provide an API first, modern banking experience for our customers, replacing the bloated middleware and legacy software that currently powers most financial companies.
Started by the co-founder of Plaid, Column has a team of 8 experienced engineers and is currently processing hundreds of billions in payments annually, supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated fintech companies. We are currently hiring our first full-stack product engineer (React, Go) to build delightful banking UX. We are also hiring an experienced infra engineer (Go, Kubernetes, AWS) to help scale our systems. Finally, we have a new role open for a junior engineer to work on full-stack internal tooling (JS, Go) with lots of opportunities for growth. We all work on high impact, independently driven projects - writing code for regulated financial infrastructure at scale.
Column (https://column.com/) | Software Eng (Product), Software Eng (Infrastructure), Software Eng (Internal Tools) | San Francisco, CA | Full Time
Column is the first nationally chartered bank built from the ground up for developers. We provide an API first, modern banking experience for our customers, replacing the bloated middleware and legacy software that currently powers most financial companies.
Started by the co-founder of Plaid, Column has a team of 8 experienced engineers and is currently processing hundreds of billions in payments annually, supporting some of the largest and most sophisticated fintech companies. We are currently hiring our first full-stack product engineer (React, Go) to build delightful banking UX. We are also hiring an experienced infra engineer (Go, Kubernetes, AWS) to help scale our systems. Finally, we have a new role open for a junior engineer to work on full-stack internal tooling (JS, Go) with lots of opportunities for growth. We all work on high impact, independently driven projects - writing code for regulated financial infrastructure at scale.
