Partner Engineer

Job description

## About Check Payroll is broken. It's still running on decades-old infrastructure. **We're rebuilding it.** We don't run payroll ourselves — we power the businesses that do. As the inventors of embedded payroll, we're redefining how people get paid and making it easier for those businesses to launch, grow, and thrive. On our team, you'll use creative problem-solving, critical thinking, and grit to simplify the complexity of payroll for thousands of employers of every size, across all industries. We ignore conventional role boundaries in favor of the unique strengths and values each builder brings to our mission: ***make paying people simple**.* [Check out our origin story!](https://app.notion.com/p/checkhq/The-Generalist-Check-Solving-the-150-Billion-Payroll-Problem-3b24274a2e75804e9141cfac60476d25?source=copy_link) Check is far more than just API infrastructure. We’re a springboard for building and scaling payroll businesses. [See how it works for our partners.](https://www.checkhq.com/partners) At Check, we call our customers "partners" to reflect the deep relationships and aligned incentives we have with the businesses that build on top of our software. Our Partner Engineering team is dedicated to helping partners unlock the full potential of their payroll solutions through proactive, strategic, technical guidance. This approach fosters product adoption, expansion, and deeper partnerships. **About the Team** The Partner Engineering team plays a crucial role in accelerating revenue growth by applying deep technical expertise — both in a consultative capacity and through direct, hands-on engineering — to drive better business outcomes for our partners. This team supports the partner journey from successful launch of their payroll product through growth and scale. We write code, build systems, and ship features alongside Check's core engineering organization. We work closely with cross-functional teams, including sales, engineering, and product management, to ensure that partners can effectively integrate and maximize the value of our platform. Partner Engineers are also at the forefront of Check's company-wide AI strategy, leading the integration of AI capabilities across our product and internal tooling. **About the Role** As a Partner Engineer, you will serve as both a hands-on technical builder and a strategic advisor to prospective and existing partners, helping them evaluate, integrate, and optimize their payroll solutions. You will write production code, architect integrations, and build features — not just recommend them. A defining responsibility of this role is **leading Check's adoption of AI** across our product and stack. You will identify high-leverage opportunities to embed AI into Check's platform and partner-facing surfaces, prototype and build AI-powered tools and features, and serve as a thought leader internally on how AI can transform the way Check and our partners operate. This role is ideal for someone who has a passion for working in the trenches with customers, and taking a first principles approach to solving open-ended problems at the intersection of software engineering and AI. You will have the opportunity to work with some of the largest platforms and fastest-growing companies, helping them navigate technical evaluations and achieve their business goals. **What You’ll Do** - Implementation & Integration: - Act as the bridge between sales and partners' engineering teams, ensuring smooth technical handoff. - Write code alongside partner engineering teams to accelerate integrations, debug complex issues, and demonstrate best practices. - Architect robust, scalable integration patterns for partners building on Check's platform. - Provide high-level implementation plans and estimate time to market. - Offer structured feedback to internal product and engineering teams based on partner experiences. - Assist partners in architecting, troubleshooting, and optimizing their integrations. - Post-Sales Support & Partner Success: - Serve as the subject matter expert and trusted advisor to partners post-integration. - Own the post-sales technical strategy and roadmap alignment with partners. - Establish and maintain relationships with key technical stakeholders, from engineers to C-suite executives. - Provide proactive strategic and technical guidance to drive partner adoption and growth. - Act as an advocate for partner needs within internal teams, influencing product development and innovation. - Build key features that unlock value for Check's partners — you write the code, not just the spec. - Serve as an escalation point for complex technical issues beyond standard support channels. - Build partner-facing documentation, resources, and other artifacts to aid technical enablement. - AI Strategy & Adoption: - Lead Check's company-wide efforts to identify, prototype, and ship AI-powered capabilities across our product and internal stack. - Evaluate emerging AI frameworks, models, and tooling; make concrete recommendations and own the build-out of high-priority initiatives. - Collaborate with product and engineering to define Check's AI roadmap and serve as an internal champion for responsible, high-impact AI adoption. - Help partners leverage AI to improve their own payroll and workforce management workflows built on Check's platform. **Many backgrounds could fit this role, but ideal candidates will have most or all of the following:** - **Demonstrated experience building with AI** — including LLMs, AI agents, or AI-powered tooling — and a strong point of view on where AI creates the most leverage in a product and engineering context - **Strong communication skills and executive presence**, with the ability to effectively explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences - Problem-solving mindset with an entrepreneurial approach to tackling challenges - Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment - Intellectual curiosity and adaptability to evolving technologies and business needs - 2+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including writing and shipping production code; experience in customer-facing or solutions engineering roles at a FinTech or SaaS platform preferred - Hands-on experience working with APIs and technical infrastructure; experience designing and integrating RESTful APIs into web applications required - Comfort operating at the intersection of engineering and product: you can go deep in a codebase and then turn around and communicate the tradeoffs clearly to a non-technical executive - Willing and able to attend our annual 3-day company offsite each year in the spring, and to travel occasionally as needed to support our partners ## Travel & Office Policy The Check team is distributed across the US. Roles can be remote, hybrid, or based in one of our offices in **New York City** or **San Francisco**. We offer ample opportunities and encourage employees to attend team offsites, events, and hackathons throughout year. All Checketeers gather in the spring for our annual 3-day company retreat. For our in-office and hybrid employees, our offices are open all week. We provide meals on **Tuesdays** and **Thursdays** and there are regular happy hours, game nights, and other in-person events. Remote work at Check requires the ability to perform all responsibilities without distraction or disruption, while maintaining quality, effective communication, and productivity. *--* *Check is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, provided they are consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Check is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process.* *Check participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information from all new employees to confirm that they are authorized to work in the U.S. Check does not use E-Verify to pre-screen applicants.*