So we're a bit of a weird bank.

💡 Our story

What we do

Column is a bank *and *****a ****technology company simplifying the complicated banking supply chain so companies and developers building financial products no longer need to partner with middleware providers, legacy banks, and antiquated vendors — just Column. We provide best-in-class infrastructure with unparalleled flexibility, super-clean APIs, and direct access to the Federal Reserve. Our technology was built by top engineers from Plaid, Affirm, Facebook, and Square, and we created the company we wish we had in our previous roles.

Why we do it

Before starting Column, William (our CEO & Co-founder) co-founded and built Plaid, which helped drive much of the innovation in financial services over the past decade. He spent time with (literally) hundreds of companies and founders building in financial services, and it was painfully obvious that the biggest bottleneck to their growth and innovation was the underlying banks, their antiquated technology, and the middleware they rely on. In 2019, William set out to fix this by starting from first principles and building a bank from the ground up. We’re a nationally chartered bank that has purpose-built everything in-house (including our banking core) to offer a one-stop-shop for companies and developers who are creating financial products - from basic money movement to card programs to complex lending, Column can partner with companies on all types of financial products to serve their customer base.

✨ How we’re different

We love a good whiteboarding session

Everyone’s favorite co-worker, Ollie

💰 Funding & equity structure

Column is 100% founder and employee-owned, meaning we’re funded with our own money and profits. This is different from how most companies approach their equity structure, but we think it's the best strategy for us. We are in it to build a loved and long-term company, and our cap table reflects that.

Skilled at taking group photos!

☕ Office culture

We have an in-person-focused culture and prioritize hiring in-person for our (awesome) Presidio-based San Francisco office.
For the rare remote role, you can expect to travel to San Francisco at least four times a year and internationally for our annual offsite.

We also love food and column-themed art

🏝️ Offsite & team building

Annual, multi-day international offsite and regular team-building events outside of the office.
We take having fun and getting to know each other as seriously as our day jobs.

💼 Ways of working

The culture and ways of working that we've developed at Column is something we're immensely proud and protective of - it's a big driver of what makes working here special….

🛋️ We're casual.

In almost every setting you can probably say that casual > formal. Whether it’s in-person or online communication, how we run meetings or put together slide decks, we value substance over style.

🤖 We're technical and modern.

Everyone may not know how to code (nor do we expect you to!), but we do expect you to learn how to use new tools, embrace new techniques, and use systems that you haven’t used before (e.g., Google Docs/Sheets, Retool, Asana, Linear, and beyond!)

💕 We're personal.

That's weird…what does that mean? We’re comfortable with over-sharing, talking about our personal lives, hanging out outside of work, and being real friends. This may be unusual for some people, but you’ll be surprised by how awesome people are at Column.

📈 We’re constantly improving.

The only thing we know for certain is that we’re not doing everything right. We’re obsessed with self-improvement and expect a growth mindset.

🪟 We work in the open and collaboratively.

We are not a company where you go into a black hole for a month and come out with a perfect work product. We iterate, we share early drafts riddled with mistakes, we solicit and give feedback constantly, and we partner across all teams to get it right. We don’t have hard swim lanes and we do whatever needs to be done, regardless of whether it would typically fall on us.

🧲 We’re building a hard company in a high-risk space, but we’re positive.

Things are not all put together, we don’t have a lot of stuff we probably should have, and we’ll do things wrong. Negativity sucks and makes it harder to do our job, which is hard enough as is. Column is filled with hopeful, positive optimists.

📣 Our hiring process

We have a pretty rigorous interview process, so that when we do make an offer we have a high degree of confidence in the impact someone will have upon joining. We operate in a high trust environment, which enables the folks that we do hire to immediately hit the ground running. As a candidate you may feel that our process is a bit longer than others, and that’s by design.