Software Engineer at Pilot in San Francisco, CA

The Role

Pilot is hiring a Software Engineer to join our Bookkeeping Automation team.

This team builds the systems and tooling that power high-quality bookkeeping, including secure and reliable agentic workflows, integrations with third-party systems, and the infrastructure needed to operate them effectively in production. We focus on improving the accuracy, efficiency, and reliability of bookkeeping at scale.

As a Software Engineer on the team, you’ll build product and platform capabilities that help transform financial data into dependable bookkeeping outcomes. You’ll work closely with engineers, product managers, designers, and operational experts to ship systems that are practical, measurable, and robust.

This is a strong fit for someone who enjoys building real-world automation systems and is excited about the engineering challenges that come with agentic workflows, including orchestration, security, evaluation and observability.

Pilot’s backend is written in fully typed Python, and our frontend stack includes JavaScript, TypeScript, and Vue.js. We use Terraform to manage infrastructure, deploy containerized services on AWS, and rely on Postgres and modern observability tooling in production.

Key Responsibilities

• Build, test, and deploy software in a continuous manner
• Develop systems that power bookkeeping automation, including agentic workflows and integrations with third-party platforms
• Design and implement reliable workflow orchestration across services, tools, and operational processes
• Build observability into automation systems so teams can understand performance, investigate failures, and improve quality over time
• Contribute to the security and reliability of systems that handle sensitive financial data and operational decisions
• Help design and improve evaluation frameworks that measure workflow quality, correctness, and business impact
• Partner with PMs, designers, and cross-functional stakeholders to turn ambiguous problems into practical solutions
• Write clear technical designs, contribute thoughtful code reviews, and maintain high engineering standards
• Investigate production issues, improve system reliability, and support services as needed
• Ability to work in our San Francisco office Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays

About You

Even if you don’t have experience with every part of our stack, we’d still love to talk.

We’re looking for someone who has:

• 3+ years of experience as a software engineer
• Experience building production software and shipping customer-facing or business-critical systems
• Strong coding fundamentals and the ability to write clean, maintainable, well-tested code
• Good product and systems judgment, especially in ambiguous or evolving problem spaces
• Strong communication skills and comfort working cross-functionally
• Interest in building automation systems that are reliable, observable, and secure
• A thoughtful approach to building systems that are trustworthy, practical, and effective in production

Nice to Have

• Experience with Python in production
• Experience with workflow orchestration, automation platforms, or distributed systems
• Familiarity with agentic or AI-assisted systems in production environments
• Experience building observability, alerting, or operational debugging tools
• Experience with system security, permissions, or handling sensitive data
• Experience building evaluation or quality measurement frameworks
• Experience with fintech, accounting, or financial operations tooling
• Experience integrating with third-party APIs and external systems

Why This Role Matters

The Bookkeeping Automation team is building systems that expand what Pilot can automate while preserving quality, trust, and control. Agentic workflows are only valuable when they are observable, secure, measurable, and reliable in production. This role is an opportunity to shape those foundations and help define how modern automation can improve financial operations at scale.

About Pilot

Pilot launched in 2017 to bring the back office into the modern era. Pilot provides small businesses with dedicated finance experts - which Pilot hires as full-time, U.S.-based employees - who learn the ins-and-outs of their business. Pilot integrates directly with the billing, banking, expense, and payroll systems customers already use. With a special blend of custom software and expert bookkeepers, Pilot delivers accurate, consistent bookkeeping and financial management and tax services that give entrepreneurs the freedom to focus on their business.

Pilot has over 3,000 customers and has raised over $170 million in financing from Sequoia, Index Ventures, Stripe, Bezos Expeditions, and Whale Rock.  Our investors also include a long list of world-class entrepreneurs, including Patrick and John Collison, Drew Houston, and Diane Greene.  Our most recent funding round doubled our valuation to $1.2 billion – Meet Fintech’s Newest Unicorn.

Why Pilot?

• We invest in our employees’ development and happiness because our employees are the keys to our success and ensuring happy customers
• The opportunity to join a seasoned founding team that has led companies through two prior successful startups and acquisitions (by Oracle and Dropbox).
• Flexible vacation/time-off policy
• All federal holidays are observed
• Competitive benefits package including additional wellness benefits
• Parental leave for birthing or non-birthing parents – 100% pay for 12 weeks
• 401(k) plan

The base pay range target for the role seniority described in this job description is $138,000 - $186,000 in San Francisco, CA. Final offer amounts depend on multiple factors such as candidate experience and expertise, geographic location, total compensation, and market data. In addition to cash pay, full-time regular positions are eligible for equity, 401(k), health benefits, and other benefits; some of these benefits may be available for part-time or temporary positions.

Pilot commits to provide a work environment free of discrimination and harassment, as well as equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. You may view all of Pilot’s recruiting notices here, including our EEO policy, information about requesting a reasonable accommodation in the job application process, recruitment agency policy, recruitment scam notice, and important E-Verify information. You may view our job candidate privacy policy here.