Working at Brex in 2026: Culture, Compensation & What Employees Say

Brex is one of the most closely watched fintechs in Silicon Valley. Founded in 2017 by Brazilian duo Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi — who were just 22 at the time — Brex built the first corporate card designed specifically for startups, and quickly became the default spend management platform for YC-backed companies and high-growth tech firms. Valued at $12.3 billion at its peak, Brex sits at the intersection of fintech, enterprise software, and increasingly, AI.

But the story since 2022 has been turbulent. Two rounds of layoffs, a pivot away from SMBs toward enterprise, and an aggressive bet on AI-powered financial tools have reshaped both the product and the culture. We pulled data from Brex's company profile, employee reviews, and engineering blog to give you an honest picture of Brex as an employer in 2026.

Brex at a Glance

Brex is a company in transition. The startup energy that defined its first five years — move fast, break into new markets, grow at all costs — has given way to a more disciplined, AI-first strategy. The culture today reflects that tension: still fast-moving and ambitious, but shaped by the reality of layoffs, a return-to-office mandate, and the pressure to prove the AI bet works. Among the 91 companies in our Culture Directory, Brex occupies an unusual position: a young company with the scars of a much older one, but with the technical ambition and compensation to match the best in fintech.

What Makes Brex's Culture Different

Three things define the culture at Brex in 2026: the founders, the AI pivot, and the memo culture.

Henrique and Pedro are unusual founders. They built a payments company in Brazil as teenagers, moved to Stanford, dropped out, and built Brex in their early twenties. They're still deeply involved in the company's technical direction, and their fingerprints are on the culture: meritocratic, high-bar, and obsessed with building a company where every employee thinks like an owner. The internal mantra is "Be the founder of your career" — and multiple reviewers cite this as both a strength (real ownership, real impact) and a challenge (sink-or-swim onboarding, high expectations from day one).

The AI pivot has been the defining story of 2025–26. Brex went further than most companies in embracing AI fluency as a core competency: every engineer, including managers, went through an AI-native interview process — not to fire anyone, but to establish a baseline of AI literacy across the org. The company is building AI-powered spend management tools that automate receipt matching, expense categorization, and policy enforcement. For engineers, this means the product work is increasingly ML-heavy, and the bar for AI fluency is real.

The third pillar is written communication. Brex runs on memos — a deliberate choice that mirrors companies like Stripe and Amazon. Decisions are documented, context is shared broadly, and the default is async-first with regular alignment forums. This is a company that rewards clarity in writing over charisma in meetings.

The Layoffs: What Happened and Where Things Stand

You can't write about Brex in 2026 without addressing the layoffs. There have been two significant rounds:

• October 2022: 11% of staff (136 people) cut as part of a broader restructuring that included exiting the SMB market to focus on enterprise.
• January 2024: 20% of staff (282 people) cut to accelerate the path to profitability. Reports at the time suggested Brex was burning $17 million per month with limited runway — though the company disputed those figures.

The layoffs left real marks on the culture. Multiple Glassdoor reviews reference them directly, and "always doing layoffs" appears as a recurring con. But the company has since stabilized: Brex currently has 253 open positions on our platform, spanning engineering, sales, product, and operations. The hiring signals suggest the worst is behind them — but the scar tissue is real, and anyone evaluating an offer should ask about financial health and runway during the interview process.

Glassdoor Ratings Breakdown

Brex's overall Glassdoor rating of 4.0 out of 5.0, based on 590 employee reviews, puts it on par with companies like Stripe and Figma. But the interesting story is in the sub-scores — and in the gap between how engineers rate the company versus everyone else.

The standout number is engineer-specific: software engineers rate Brex 4.3/5 overall, with a remarkable 4.8/5 for compensation. That's one of the highest engineer comp ratings we've seen across our entire directory. The 93% engineer recommendation rate (versus 75% company-wide) tells a clear story: Brex is an exceptional place to be an engineer, with more mixed signals for other functions.

Work-life balance at 3.9 is respectable — better than Stripe (3.6) and Snowflake (3.3), though below top performers like HubSpot (4.1) and Notion (4.2).

What Employees Actually Say

We analyzed recurring themes across Brex's 590 Glassdoor reviews. The picture that emerges is a company with genuinely strong fundamentals — but one that carries the weight of its recent history.

What employees love

The comp is the clearest signal: Brex pays at the top of fintech, and engineers know it. Beyond money, the consistent themes are the quality of colleagues, the founder energy that persists despite the company's growth, and the genuine product-market fit — Brex's enterprise customers genuinely love the product, and that translates to meaningful product impact for the people building it.

What could be better

The layoff anxiety is the most common theme in recent negative reviews. The January 2024 cut was particularly painful because it came after the company had already restructured once. Some reviewers describe a culture of uncertainty that took months to dissipate. The return-to-office shift (3 days per week starting February 2026) also drew criticism, especially from employees who joined during the remote-first era and now face relocation pressure.

Compensation & Benefits

Brex's compensation is, by the numbers, exceptional — particularly for engineers. The 4.2 Glassdoor rating for Compensation & Benefits reflects a company that competes directly with Stripe, Ramp, and even AI labs for engineering talent.

Total compensation for software engineers ranges from $223K at L1 to $720K+ at L6, with a median of $435K. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the median climbs to $460K. The highest reported total comp is $608K for an L5 engineer. These numbers put Brex in the top tier of fintech compensation — ahead of most traditional finance companies and competitive with frontier AI labs at the senior levels.

Beyond base and equity, Brex offers comprehensive benefits including generous parental leave, learning stipends, and strong healthcare coverage. The equity component is meaningful given the company's $12.3B valuation, though the private-market liquidity question (when can you actually sell your shares?) is a factor that candidates should ask about.

Engineering Culture & Tech Stack

Brex's engineering organization has undergone a significant transformation. The original backend was built in Elixir — chosen for its concurrency model and fault tolerance, ideal for processing high volumes of financial transactions. But as the company scaled, they migrated to Kotlin — a pragmatic move that traded Elixir's elegance for the JVM ecosystem's maturity, tooling, and hiring pool.

Tech Stack

The current stack centers on Kotlin for backend services, TypeScript and React for frontend, with PostgreSQL, ArangoDB, and Snowflake for data. Infrastructure runs on Kubernetes and AWS, with Kafka for event streaming, gRPC for service communication, and Bazel for build tooling. It's a modern, well-architected stack that reflects serious engineering investment.

How engineering works at Brex

• AI-first development. Every engineer is expected to be AI-fluent. The company rolled out an AI-native technical assessment that all engineers — including managers — went through. AI tools are embedded in the development workflow, and new features increasingly involve ML components.
• Memo-driven decisions. Major technical decisions start with written memos that are shared broadly. This mirrors the Stripe approach and ensures context is preserved and decisions are well-reasoned.
• "One Brex" culture. Cross-functional collaboration is a core value. Product, engineering, design, sales, and ops work in integrated teams rather than functional silos. The "no silos, no egos" mantra is frequently cited in reviews.
• Founder-level ownership. Engineers are expected to own their domains end-to-end. The "Be the founder of your career" ethos means real autonomy paired with real accountability.

The Elixir-to-Kotlin migration is a fascinating case study in pragmatic engineering. Brex chose Elixir early on for its fault-tolerance and concurrency — perfect for a financial transactions platform. But as the team grew, Kotlin's stronger type system, broader talent pool, and JVM ecosystem made it the more sustainable choice. It's the kind of migration that signals engineering maturity: choosing the right tool for the current scale, not just the one that's intellectually interesting.

The Return-to-Office Shift

Starting February 2026, Brex implemented a mandatory 3-day in-office policy (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday), with 90%+ of new hiring concentrated in San Francisco and New York. This is a significant reversal from the remote-first posture the company adopted during 2020–2022, and it's one of the most discussed topics in recent reviews.

The rationale, per leadership, is that the company's AI-first strategy and ship-fast culture benefit from in-person collaboration. But the move has drawn pushback from employees who relocated during the remote era or who joined specifically because of the distributed culture. If remote work is a priority for you, Brex is no longer the right fit — consider GitLab, Notion, or PostHog instead.

Who Thrives at Brex

Brex is not for everyone — and the company's own culture deliberately filters for a specific type of person. Based on the data and employee reviews, here's who tends to do well:

• AI-curious engineers. If you're excited about integrating AI into every part of a product, Brex is building one of the most ambitious AI-powered fintech platforms in the industry. The AI bar is real and rising.
• Ownership-oriented builders. The "founder of your career" ethos means you'll have real autonomy and product impact — but also real accountability. If you need structured onboarding and hand-holding, this isn't the place.
• People who thrive in post-adversity cultures. Companies that survive layoffs and emerge stronger often develop a unique resilience. The current team at Brex is self-selected for people who chose to stay (or join) despite the turbulence. That creates a tight-knit, high-conviction culture.
• Fintech enthusiasts. Brex's enterprise customers genuinely love the product. If you care about building financial tools that people actually use, the customer signal here is strong.
• Strong writers. The memo culture rewards clear, structured thinking. If you communicate better in writing than in meetings, you'll feel at home.

Brex is not ideal for people who want maximum stability and predictability, for remote-first workers (given the new office mandate), or for those who prefer slow, methodical environments. The pace is fast, the expectations are high, and the recent history means the culture carries some anxiety alongside its ambition. If stability is your top priority, consider HubSpot or Datadog instead.

Open Positions at Brex

Brex currently has 253 open positions listed on our platform, with engineering (62 roles), sales (81), product (20), and operations (16) as the largest hiring areas. Positions are concentrated in San Francisco (74), New York (63), Seattle (49), and Vancouver (37). The active hiring — especially in engineering and product — signals that the post-layoff stabilization is real and the company is investing in growth again.

For full details on Brex's open roles, culture values, and side-by-side comparisons with other companies, visit the Brex culture profile page.