Zed Financial, Inc.
Zed is a challenger bank that’s helping young professionals in emerging markets access credit responsibly and build habits for long-term financial success. This is an exciting opportunity to join an early stage team on a mission to fix a broken, trillion dollar banking system that has shut out the world's youngest and fastest growing consumer classes.
We are currently pre-launch with a planned Beta later this year.
Our team is uniquely built to solve this problem. We are Stanford engineers and former YC founders that have spent our careers in banking, private equity and at hyper-growth startups (Facebook, Stripe, Square, Box), and previously built and exited a fast-growing B2B payments company (Symple YC W'17). We are working closely with regulators and have a multi-generation history in the banking industry in the countries that we plan on launching in.
We just raised a large seed round led by Valar (Peter Thiel) with Kunal Shah (Cred), Immad Akhund (Mercury), Doug Scherrer (Nubank), Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator), Nafis Jamal (MoPub), Fathom Capital, Redo Ventures and others participating.
Why join us?
We just raised a large round of funding led by Peter Thiel with founders/leaders from Stripe, Square, NuBank, and Y Combinator participating.
The team is made up of technical founders that have spent their careers in banking, private equity and at hyper-growth startups (Facebook, Stripe, Square, Box), and previously built and exited a YC-backed B2B payments company (Symple YC W'17). We also have direct ties to regulators and a multi-generation history in the banking industry in the countries that we plan on launching in.
Our platform architecture leans heavily on distributed systems and functional programming, and provides an amazing opportunity to apply more modern languages/tools to a real world use case dominated by legacy technology.
Engineering at Zed Financial, Inc.
Our team is setup in a similar structure to Spotify’s “Squad Model”, where cross functional teams (design, backend, client) work together closely on deliverables. Each month starts with a collective planning session where large services are identified and prioritized (Onboarding, Virtual Cards, etc…), rough estimates are provided, and goals are agreed upon. Teams work autonomously to spec the related features and engineers work on those features.
Each week, there’s a demo day where teams can present anything they’re working on (in-progress or complete), but there’s no expectation that teams present every demo day. Each month has a mid-month check-in to discuss progress, unexpected challenges, and potential goal resetting, and then ends with a final review.d
We're building a write heavy system that requires high-availability, auditability, and concurrency. Folks who have interest in functional programming paradigms, event sourcing patterns and are generally interested in thinking about and managing systems will have a lot of fun working at Zed!
You will help build a core banking system capable of supporting millions of transactions a day, thereby unlocking access to financial services to millions of underserved young people, from scratch.
You will participate in the build out of a new underwriting model for young people in emerging markets.
Working at Zed Financial, Inc.
Our founding team will be core to shaping our culture. Everyone will have outsized ownership and impact as we build towards launch later this year.
We're assembling a team of exceptionally talented doers who work hard but efficiently and work well together because they are empathetic and collaborative. Building a 0-1 product can be intense and challenging, but we will ensure it is also incredibly fun, exciting and rewarding for every member of our team.
We're proud to be woman and minority-founded and our goal is to maintain this diversity as we grow. Since we're building a product for emerging markets outside of the US, we screen for candidates' ability to empathize with our end user populations, and we believe having a diverse workforce is a requirement for our success.
We're a small tight-knit team. We encourage spending time building personal connections talking and collaborating with each other over establishing rigid processes. New team members can expect to find that we all are eager to get to know them on a personal level, and where safe and possible given today's 100% remote set-up, will make the effort to connect in person for some social time.
Everyone on our team currently is from an underrepresented background, so we're here to listen and to work together on ensuring we keep up this supportive environment as we group.
As part of our commitment to an inclusive workplace, we are happy to offer prospective engineers the chance to connect with our engineering employees who come from underrepresented backgrounds. It’s a way to get a better sense of our team and what it might be like to work with us.
If you’re interested in connecting with our team, be sure to bring this up during one of our introductory calls!
-
Women-led company
One of Zed's two cofounders is a woman :-)
-
Minority-led company
Both Zed's cofounders are from minority backgrounds (Danielle is Filipino and an immigrant and Steve is Indian American from Queens NY.)
-
Generous Vacation
Unlimited vacation
-
Travel
Engineering, Product and Design teams will have a home base in the Bay Area (with some team members fully remote), and we'll have an office in Manila, Philippines — our first launch country. We're excited to be able to offer all team members company-subsidized travel to the Philippines, not only for work, but also to explore the region.
-
Pet Friendly
We love dogs! We'll eventually have a Bay Area office space (or two) for those who prefer to work outside of home as needed. We'll prioritize finding a space that can accommodate well-behaved dogs.
-
Company Retreats
When international travel is safe again, we'll hold regular company off-sites at fun locations throughout Southeast Asia (e.g. Palawan, Siargao, Bali) where we can bring the entire team together, relax and immerse in the vibrant community we're building for.
-
Health Insurance
We provide medical and dental insurance.
-
Flexible Hours
We don't have any hard rules around work hours, but we typically work 10am - 6 or 7PM SF time. Our overlap hours with Manila are 5pm - 9pm and occassionally take calls around those hours. We encourage team members to work the hours they feel most productive at so long as deadlines are met and they're able to attend team meetings. We minimize recurring meetings as much as possible to prioritize
maker time.
-
Work from Home
Everyone is working from home 100% currently. We do want to offer the option to work from an office or coworking space in the future, and will be exploring that as the team grows.
-
Prioritizes diversity in hiring
We're committed to expanding the diversity represented by our founding team.
-
Social impact driven
Our mission is to become the trusted financial services partner for the young, rapidly growing middle class in emerging markets. This group of people has been shut out by traditional banks, despite the fact that they have been the key driver of economic growth in these regions.
-
Serves underrepresented populations
The core demographic we are serving is young underbanked individuals in emerging markets, starting with Southeast Asia.
-
LGBTQ+ friendly
We're a small diverse team with a goal of becoming even more diverse as we grow — this means ensuring we bring on board and support team members from the LGBTQ+ community.
Engineering team
Company-wide
Leadership
Board
External Links
Interested in this company?
Skip straight to final-round interviews by applying through Triplebyte.