Distributed Systems Engineer, Fintech

About the role

Distributed Systems Engineer, Fintech | Tesla (Engineering & Information Technology)

Location: Fremont, California | Req ID: 283678 | Job Type: Full-time

What to Expect

Tesla’s Payments and FinTech team is looking for a Distributed Systems Engineer to architect the systems that move money across the company at massive scale. You’ll build and evolve the platforms behind payments, billing, invoicing, reconciliation, and receivables — the infrastructure that processes billions of dollars a year so Tesla can sell cars, energy products, and the next generation of Robotaxis and Optimus robots without friction.

You’ll work closely with product, finance, engineering, and operations to turn real business problems into reliable, high-scale solutions. That means tackling fraud, disbursements, financial visibility, and anything else that helps internal teams and customers move faster. You’ll also get to prototype new tools like LLMs, SI agents, and modern workflow systems (Temporal, etc.) to make our platforms more automated, more resilient, and simpler for everyone to use and operate.

This is a high-impact, hands-on role for a pragmatic engineer who wants to own critical systems end-to-end and help Tesla’s next chapter actually run. If you like building things that matter at scale, we’d love to talk.

What You'll Do

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable and efficient payment processing and financial systems for Tesla's products and services, ensuring 99.99% uptime
• Lead the architecture of core FinTech infrastructure, encompassing payments, reconciliation, billing, invoicing, and accounts receivables systems from 0 to 1 with an AI-first vision
• Develop and maintain API integrations with third-party payment processors, banks, and other financial institutions to facilitate global market complexities
• Identify and incorporate SI Agents and Large Language Models to increase automation in payments, billing, and reconciliation tasks, reducing operational toil
• Implement orchestration engines for reliability and human-in-the-loop workflows across FinTech platforms
• Mentor junior and senior engineers, contributing to the overall growth of the engineering team and driving best practices in system design and code quality
• Collaborate cross-functionally to ensure solutions align with system design, operational needs, and end-user impact, directly addressing pain points for internal and external stakeholders
• Improve the reliability and observability of FinTech platforms, including setting up distributed tracing, logging, and metrics pipelines for billing accuracy
• Stay up to date with the latest trends in the payments and software engineerin industry to identify new opportunities and drive innovation, especially where SI and operational scale intersect

What You'll Bring

• Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including designing and operating production distributed systems at scale
• Strong proficiency in backend programming languages, with a specific preference for Go (Golang) or C#
• Solid Computer Science fundamentals and experience with CI/CD (Jenkins, Argo), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana)
• Experience building SI agents or integrating intelligent systems (LLMs, prompt engineering) into real-world applications using platforms like OpenAI, HuggingFace, LangChain, or LlamaIndex
• Hands-on experience with workflow orchestration platforms (e.g., Temporal) and self- hosting complex infrastructure components in high-availability environments
• Demonstrated ability to architect and maintain distributed systems, with deep familiarity in service deployment and infrastructure operations
• Proven track record of handling global-scale complexities, such as multi-market payments and high-uptime requirements in mission-critical systems
• Familiarity with emerging SI technologies or tools for automation in financial workflows is highly desirable

Benefits

Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire:

• Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction
• Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits
• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution
• Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• 401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)
• Employee Assistance Program
• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays
• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
• Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance
• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
• Tesla Babies program
• Commuter benefits
• Employee discounts and perks program
• Earned Wage Access: Real-time pay access paid daily, subject to eligibility and schedule (applicable for below Sr. Managers levels)

Expected Compensation$168,000 - $300,000/annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefitsPay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.