About the role
We're looking for a Staff Engineer to own and drive the backend architecture of our core platform. This is a hands-on technical leadership role where you will be designing systems, writing code, mentoring engineers, and making the architectural decisions that determine how our platform scales.
Responsibilities:
- Own the design and architecture of critical backend systems APIs, microservices, data pipelines, and third-party integrations.
- Drive technical decisions across teams, set the standard for code quality, system design, and engineering best practices.
- Write production code every day. This is a player-coach role, not a management role.
- Lead design reviews and architecture discussions; write RFCs and technical specs that other engineers implement.
- Mentor Senior Engineers and help them grow into technical leaders.
- Identify and solve scalability, reliability, and performance challenges before they become crises.
- Work closely with product, operations, and business teams to translate requirements into robust technical systems.
- Build for scale design systems that can handle 10x the current load without fundamental rework.
Requirements:
- 8-13 years of backend software engineering experience with at least 2-3 years at Staff or equivalent scope.
- With strong system design and distributed systems fundamentals, you can design a system from scratch and defend your tradeoffs.
- Hands-on backend experience in Java, Go, or Python preferred; stack matters less than depth.
- Experience with microservices, event-driven architecture, and high-throughput systems at scale.
- Proficiency in cloud infrastructure, AWS or GCP, Kubernetes, Docker.
- Strong grasp of databases, SQL (PostgreSQL / MySQL) and NoSQL; understands when to use which.
- Experience with message queues and streaming systems, such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or equivalent.
- Prior experience at a B2C product company, you've built systems that serve real consumers at scale.
- Comfortable working in a fast-moving, ambiguous pre-IPO environment.