Software Engineers

We are seeking to add a small number of bright engineers to our small team of hackers. An academic mindset is a plus. Cool side projects are encouraged.

What We Do

Smartleaf is changing the way private wealth is managed. Our hosted service generates daily trade recommendations used to manage over $50 billion in assets across more than 50,000 accounts belonging to individual investors (e.g., your neighbor, you, your parents). We are privately owned, profitable, and growing rapidly.

We help service individual accounts through our clients, who are typically wealth managers at bank trusts, registered investment advisors, and broker/dealers. We are a small team of dedicated visionaries and engineers. By automating much of what is involved in wealth management, we are making it possible for ordinary investors to receive a level of wealth management that was once the exclusive preserve of the ultra wealthy investor. We have stubbornly worked toward moving the needle of what a single individual can expect in wealth management.

What We Don’t Do

We do not have a trading floor. We do not dress in suits. We are not part of mainstream finance, but hope to change the norm of what it means to the individual investor — this is at the very core of our group DNA.

Who We Are

Smartleaf is made up of entrepreneurially minded people of diverse backgrounds and experience levels. The development team includes the principal author of the Apache 1.0 server and former members of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This mix allows us to keep our service both stable and innovative.

Our alumni have gone on to do great things, both as academics and entrepreneurs. We are skeptical of buzzwords and don’t mind reinventing the wheel for a good reason.

Qualifications

You are driven, smart, and collegial. Most of your peers think you’re among the smartest people they know.

Obligatory bullets:

BS/BA or higher in CS or a related field
Preference to solve causes, not symptoms
0-5 years of postgraduate experience
Ability to close projects

Note that we do not mention our technology stack above. We believe the “right” people will be successful regardless of the specific technologies they have used in the past. That said, you do get bonus points for experience with: Ruby, Rails, Perl, C++, Apache, Oracle, Postgres, git. More bonus points for contributions to open source projects.

The Work

Our team supports in-house built systems for quantitative analysis, data processing, and user interaction. We aim to build everything for the long haul and to avoid support work by not creating a need for it.

We do not keep separate support engineers — your code is yours and you support it. As a result, you will likely write copious amounts of automated tests for your own code.

The Firm

Founded in 1999, Smartleaf is still small in numbers and privately held. We are located directly above the Kendall Square T stop, in a sunny, seventh-floor office. In addition to competitive compensation, Smartleaf employees receive comprehensive health and dental coverage, three weeks paid time off, flexible work hours, ISOs, free food, and an espresso machine better than most coffee houses’ (almost like it’s 1999).