At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Role Summary

The Principal Site Reliability Engineer applies software engineering and systems engineering practices to improve the reliability, resilience, scalability, and operational health of production services. The role partners with Software Engineering and other technology teams to ensure reliability, observability, recoverability, performance, and operational readiness are engineered into systems throughout their lifecycle.

The role operates at enterprise scope, establishing technical direction and applying evidence-driven engineering, technical rigor, sound judgment, automation, and broad systems expertise across organizational boundaries.

Core Responsibilities

Use software engineering, automation, and DevOps principles and practices to continually improve how services are built, tested, deployed, observed, operated, and recovered.

Use data, evidence, experimentation, and rigorous engineering analysis appropriate to the level to identify reliability risks, test assumptions, and guide technical decisions.

Define, implement, or improve SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and other service-health measures appropriate to the scope of responsibility.

Improve observability through metrics, logging, tracing, monitoring, alerting, dashboards, and service-health instrumentation.

Drive continuous improvement across CI/CD, observability, deployment practices, Infrastructure as Code, automation, testing, incident response, capacity management, resilience, and operational readiness.

Identify recurring or systemic production issues and translate operational experience into improvements in code, architecture, automation, tooling, and engineering practices.

Partner with Software Engineering teams to incorporate reliability, resiliency, scalability, performance, observability, recoverability, and operational readiness throughout the development lifecycle.

Participate in or lead incident response, troubleshooting, service restoration, and blameless post-incident learning appropriate to the level.

Provides enterprise-level technical leadership for critical production incidents and establishes or influences engineering practices that improve incident response, escalation, service restoration and sustainable on-call operations across the organization.

Reduce operational toil and unnecessary manual intervention through software, automation, reusable patterns, and better engineering practices.

Leveling Intent

Principal represents enterprise domain-level technical leadership and organizational impact. Deep individual expertise is expected, but Principal-level impact comes from identifying systemic risk, establishing technical direction, influencing engineering practices and architecture, and multiplying the capability of the broader engineering organization.

Level Expectations

Acts as an enterprise force multiplier, raising the effectiveness and technical capability of engineers and teams across the organization while building sustainable organizational capability rather than individual dependency.

Demonstrates software engineering, systems thinking, troubleshooting, and production reliability capabilities appropriate to the level.

Applies evidence-driven reasoning and technical rigor to distinguish observed facts from assumptions and make defensible engineering recommendations.

Shares knowledge and contributes to sustainable engineering capability rather than creating dependency on individual expertise.

Operates with significant autonomy across the organization's most consequential reliability challenges.

Establishes enterprise technical direction, develops senior technical leaders, and demonstrates impact well beyond systems personally touched.

Minimum Qualifications

Typically 15+ years of relevant professional experience in Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Systems Engineering, Cloud/Platform Engineering, DevOps, Infrastructure Engineering, Architecture where applicable, or a comparable technical discipline.

Experience with software development or scripting using one or more modern programming languages.

Experience with software engineering principles, distributed systems, production troubleshooting, automation, and observability appropriate to the level.

Experience with public cloud technologies and architectures, preferably AWS, along with infrastructure, networking, Linux/Unix, and modern application architectures appropriate to the level.

Demonstrated analytical, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills appropriate to the scope of the role.

Preferred Qualifications

Hands-on experience with AWS is preferred, or comparable experience with another major cloud platform such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Experience developing, deploying, operating, or improving highly available production software or distributed systems.

Experience with CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, containers or orchestration, observability, monitoring, alerting, and software-delivery automation.

Experience with SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, incident management, performance analysis, capacity management, resilience testing, disaster recovery, or operational readiness appropriate to the level.

Experience creating reusable automation, tooling, platforms, patterns, or practices that improve engineering effectiveness.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

The base pay scale for this position in:
Phoenix, AZ in USD per year is: $173,000 - $230,000.
San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $207,000 - $276,000.
Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Physical Requirements

Early Warning works together in a highly collaborative office environment. Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States at the date of hire.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness

Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.
401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.
Paid Time Off – Flexible Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.
12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave
Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.

About the company

Early Warning provides fraud prevention, identity verification, and risk management solutions for financial institutions, government entities, and payment companies in the United States. It operates by a bank-to-bank data-sharing network and acts as a nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency, managing and stewarding data to create a single view of fraud activity and enable real-time payments, deposit and check validation, and verification. Its strength lies in bank-to-bank data sharing and data stewardship across the banking industry, offering cross-functional fraud visibility for real-time payments and deposits. The goal is to prevent deposit losses and financial crime by delivering trusted data, risk insights, and verification capabilities across the US financial system.

Company Size

1,001-5,000

Company Stage

N/A

Total Funding

$22.9M

Headquarters

Scottsdale, Arizona

Founded

1990

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

Citi launched Paze in March 2026, extending reach to millions of cardmembers.
ACI Worldwide added Paze in January 2026, expanding merchant distribution across Pay.On.
Early Warning announced India in June 2026, opening a massive remittance corridor.

What critics are saying

New York's July 2026 ruling keeps the fraud case alive through discovery and trial.
Attorney General James alleges Zelle enabled over $1 billion in fraud, threatening restitution.
India launch and ZelleUSD invite regulator scrutiny before global expansion proves durable.

What makes Early Warning unique

Seven owner banks anchor Early Warning's fraud data network and payments reach.
Paze combines eligible cards into one bank-backed checkout wallet, reducing manual entry.
Zelle now spans $1.2 trillion annual transfers and global remittance rails.

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Benefits

Health Insurance

401(k) Retirement Plan

401(k) Company Match

Unlimited Paid Time Off

Paid Vacation

Paid Parental Leave

Family Planning Benefits

Flexible Work Hours

Company News

Yahoo Finance

Jun 27th, 2026

New York AG sues Zelle for allegedly allowing fraudsters to steal $1B from consumers

New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Early Warning Services, Zelle's parent company, alleging the payment platform failed to implement safeguards that allowed fraudsters to steal over $1 billion between 2017 and 2023. The lawsuit claims Zelle's rushed launch led to design flaws including quick registration and lack of verification. EWS is co-owned by seven major banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. The suit follows a similar case by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was dropped after the agency faced significant restructuring under the Trump administration. James's lawsuit seeks restitution for affected New Yorkers and a court order requiring anti-fraud measures. A Zelle spokesperson called the lawsuit a "political stunt". Zelle had 151 million users as of 2024.

Boland Hill Media, LLC

Jun 12th, 2026

Zelle's foray into India and other digital transactions news briefs from 6/12/26.

Zelle's foray into India and other digital transactions news briefs from 6/12/26. * Early Warning Services LLC said India is the first country outside the United States where U.S. users of the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service can send remittances. Simultaneously, Early Warning introduced its first stablecoin, ZelleUSD, aimed at international payments from U.S. users. * Stable, a blockchain network featuring the stablecoin USDT, has joined the Mesh Alliance Program as a Gold member. The effort is expected to help enable enterprise companies to connect more directly to transactions using USDT. * E-commerce technology developer Shopware has launched Shopware Payments, based on technology from PayPal. * Bridge, a technology developer for health care, launched its Patient Access and Revenue Suite, which includes embedded-payments capabilities and digital wallets. * Cryptocurrency payments company BitPay marked its 15th year in business and said it has processed more than 900,000 transactions so far this year, up 12% from this time last year. Stablecoins account for nearly half of that volume, the company said. * Block Inc.'s Square point-of-sale payments platform has launched Square High Yield Savings, which offers Square merchants a 3.5% average yield if they maintain a daily balance of at least $10,000 or more in a Square Savings account. * Nacha, the governing body for the automated clearing house network, said it has named Backpack a preferred partner for ACH experience, open banking, and risk and fraud prevention. Backpack specializes in payments for higher education. Preferred partners "offer products and services that advance the ACH network," Nacha said. * Power Financial Credit Union has chosen the NCR Atleos Corp. and Allpoint+ networks to widen its cash-access services for customers. * "High Risk Merchant Accounts 101: The Essential Guide to Payment Processing in High Risk & Regulated Industries," a book published by SoarPay, has achieved best-seller status on Amazon since its release in May, according to authors Adam Carlson, SoarPay's chief executive, and entrepreneur Andy Hagans.

Associated Press

Jun 11th, 2026

Zelle launches India expansion and ZelleUSD stablecoin after moving $1.2T in 2025

Zelle will expand to India later this year, marking the peer-to-peer payment service's first international market since launching nine years ago. Early Warning Services, which operates Zelle, selected India as its starting point because roughly a third of annual remittances to India originate from the United States. The company plans further international expansion and will create ZelleUSD, a US dollar-backed stablecoin to support operations in other markets. Zelle processed over $1.2 trillion in transfers during 2025, making it one of America's most popular direct payment services. The expansion follows years of scrutiny over fraud and unauthorised transfers. A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawsuit filed in December 2024 was dropped in March 2025, though New York Attorney General Letitia James's similar lawsuit continues. Early Warning Services is owned by seven major banks including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.

PR Newswire

Mar 17th, 2026

Citi adds Paze digital wallet for millions of US credit cardmembers

Early Warning Services has expanded its Paze online checkout solution to Citi, giving millions of credit cardmembers access to the bank-offered digital wallet. Eligible Citi cardmembers can activate Paze through Citi.com, the Citi Mobile App, or mywallet.paze.com. Paze allows customers to check out online without manually entering card details, using tokenisation for added security. The service is available at leading online merchants across apparel, electronics, jewellery, food, entertainment and beauty sectors. According to a survey, 72% of US consumers value digital wallet efficiency for online transactions, whilst 82% trust their banks' security more than third-party payment options. More than 165 million credit and debit cards have been added to the Paze platform, which is operated by Early Warning Services.

PR Newswire

Sep 4th, 2025

Extending the Reach of Zelle(R): Alacriti and Early Warning Join Forces

Alacriti partners with Early Warning Services to embed Zelle(R) into its Orbipay Payments Hub

Early Warning

Principal Site Reliability Engineer

About the job