Product

 is a financial technology company working to make education more accessible and affordable. We believe two fundamental truths:

That is why our broader mission is to build payments technology that creates deflationary impacts on the cost of education. While we are starting with 529 College Saving Accounts, we have already to started to build out our product breadth, helping Universities manage previously manual payment processes with our University Banking Platform.

We have raised a $5m Seed Round from , and founders and executives from companies like SoFi, Chime, Plaid, Lithic, Vouch, Point 72 and more. This sets us up brilliantly for sustainable growth of team and scale to make this vision a reality.

 are state administered college savings accounts that grow free of capital gains taxes on the condition that the funds are spent on . At the end of 2023, there were nearly $500bn in assets in these 529 plan accounts with annual gross payment volumes of $40bn+. This is a huge acceleration from a decade ago where payment volume was in the low single digit billions. This acceleration is a result of the maturation of accounts and generally is a good thing (more families reaping the benefits of 529); however, because of the state based structure of 529 there has never been any investment into a unified payment infrastructure. In fact, the vast majority of payments are still delivered through physical check which causes huge problems including delayed enrollments, dropped classes, late fees and even causing students to drop out or forfeit their places altogether.

This has come at the same time state and federal legislators have started to expand Section 529 as a way of addressing increasing education affordability issues. The definition of a qualified expense has expanded tremendously; where 529 funds can now be used for a variety of education related expenses including K-12, trade schools, apprenticeships, textbooks, laptops and other supplies, room and board, paying down student loans and even rolling over excess funds into a retirement account, broadening the merchant universe for 529 similar to HSA/FSA in the early 2000’s.

The payments acceleration and legislative expansion of 529 has created a fragmented ecosystem on top of a huge asset vertical. Our opportunity is to build the first integrated payments platform for 529, built around student families, serving everyone from 529 plans themselves, Universities, Merchants and tuition payment portals.

Our goal is to make 529 payments shockingly simple and worry-free for our users. That means that internally we need to build complex systems and processes to handle the complicated money movement and administrative processes on their behalf.

Our founding team has been brought together to ensure we have the best blend of experience to achieve this; from deep payments and technical expertise, to go-to-market and operations. We are a group of past operators and executives that have worked at technology companies like Uber and Sunsama, Fintech companies like SoFi and Atlas, and traditional financial services companies like UBS, KPMG and Accenture.

Learn more about the team’s experience on LinkedIn:

 - Founder and CEO

 - COO

 - Head of Engineering

- Snr Front End Engineer

- Snr Backend Engineer

This is an opportunity to join the a small, ambitious team to build a completely new class of fintech - a complex connective payments system supporting the $1.8 trillion in higher education savings in the US. You will report directly to the Founder and CEO of Backpack.

We are looking for someone that is ready to both take on direct responsibility for product verticals, and also is willing and hungry to help out wherever needed. This person will immediately have ownership of our University Platform in particular, figuring out how we build and serve our University partners to move hundreds of millions in tuition payments.

• Build and own our University Banking Platform, including developing and maintaining a roadmap and technical documentation for our Bursar Dashboard and other technical integrations.
• Scope, design and work with Backpack’s engineering team to develop new features for our consumer facing 529 Spending Account.
• Scope, design and implement large scale payments systems, information services and APIs to support automated payments and authentication.
• Collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders across the company to build new features at large-scale, while improve internal engineering standards, tooling, and processes.

You are someone that loves working in a small team where everyone is accountable for the success of the company. You will be successful as a self-starter that takes enormous pride in delivering high-quality work consistently and without a ton of oversight. This also means being able to thrive in ambiguity and work collaboratively with the entire team to iterate through problems and craft creative solutions that deliver great outcomes for our customers. You will have an outsized role in developing a completely new payments ecosystem for a huge asset class right from the beginning and should be passionate about setting both the longer term direction and nailing the details / one percenters from day one.

Above all, you are someone looking to make the jump into an operator role and are excited at the prospect at being involved in every facet of the business. This is not a 9 to 5 and there won’t be much hand holding - and that should excite you.

• A strong product background (the more technical the better), including 5+ years of experience in building products from the ground up
• Comfortable with SQL and data analytics
• Understanding of REST API design and principles
• Experience building UX wireframes, mockups, and prototypes from product reference documents
• Strong analytical capability in modeling complex business flows and turning the business requirements into technical components
• A willingness (low-ego nature) to help out on whatever is needed at the time, whether that be product development, support tickets, GTM, compliance activities and whatever else comes up.

• Understanding of Developer Experience
• Experience building database models
• Experience building SOC 2 compliant engineering systems
• You know how the US payments system works (likely from having worked in financial services or Fintech)
• Experience with building internal and external facing tools using low/no code platforms (ie Retool)

Salary will be dependent on depth and relevancy of experience. We expect the salary range to be $140k - $180k. This role will also include significant equity ownership in the company.

We provide industry standard benefits like unlimited PTO and health, vision and benefits.

We are a remote first company with particular concentration in San Francisco and New York. We aim to be in person for approximately a week every 2-3 months - these off sites usually occur in different states around the country and are a great time!

We cannot wait to hear from passionate, driven and talented people that are excited about our mission. We are building a first of its kind Fintech company to completely revolutionize an entire asset class and, eventually, how all Americans pay for education.