Staff software engineer

Staff Backend Engineer | New York | $220k to $240k + Equity

I’m hiring a Staff Backend Engineer for a high-growth New York marketplace business that is scaling both its engineering team and the core platform behind the product. They already operate at meaningful scale with 2,700+ hotel partners and are now investing heavily in new distribution APIs, wellness and spa products, marketplace infrastructure and entirely new revenue streams. This is a genuine Staff IC role. You will still be writing production code. They are not looking for an architect sitting above the engineering team or somebody who has moved away from implementation. They want an experienced engineer who can be a force multiplier across the team.

Someone who can:

• Own difficult architecture and system design problems
• Stay deeply hands-on in production code
• Influence technical direction across engineers and teams
• Design patterns and systems that other engineers build on
• Mentor Senior engineers and raise the technical bar
• Make sound decisions around reliability, scalability and system complexity
• Work across transactional systems, APIs and complex data models
• Use AI effectively as part of modern software development

The strongest backgrounds will usually include high-scale backend systems, payments, bookings, reservations, orders, inventory, pricing, marketplace platforms or other correctness-critical environments. However, they are deliberately flexible on domain and language. They care much more about whether you are an exceptional engineer, strong system thinker and experienced technical operator.

The environment includes Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Postgres, AWS, Redis, Kafka, Datadog and OpenSearch. Ruby experience is not required. You could come from Java, Python, Go, TypeScript, C++, Ruby or another backend stack if your engineering fundamentals are strong.

What they’re looking for:

• Typically 8+ years of engineering experience
• Strong backend and distributed systems background
• Significant architecture and system design ownership
• Still highly hands-on
• Experience influencing engineers beyond your immediate work
• Strong production judgment
• Excellent communication
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment
• Strong AI-assisted development skills
• Previous Staff title is not required if you are already operating at that level

Package: $220k to $240k base + equity

New York, Flatiron 4 days per week in office, Monday to Thursday

No visa sponsorship

The engineering team is intentionally lean, so this is the kind of Staff role where your decisions will have visible impact across the product and business rather than disappearing inside a huge organisation. Message me if you’d like to hear more.