Staff Backend Software Engineer

About the role

As a Staff Backend Software Engineer, you will be a key technical leader, responsible for the design, development, and delivery of our core backend services. You will tackle complex technical challenges, set architectural direction, and champion best practices across the engineering organization. This is a highly visible role for an expert who wants to have a major impact on our platform.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of large-scale, high-performance backend systems and microservices using Node.js.
• Drive the adoption of modern software development practices, including automated testing, code reviews, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Architect, maintain, and monitor robust, scalable, and reliable services on AWS, leveraging services like EKS, MSK (Kafka), and S3.
• Mentor other backend engineers and provide technical guidance to elevate the skill level of the entire team.
• Lead the response and resolution for complex production incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement preventative measures.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, DevOps, and front-end engineers, to deliver timely, high-quality, and performing end-to-end solutions.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in backend software development, including significant time as a senior or staff engineer owning complex, high-throughput production services.
• Deep Node.js/TypeScript expertise, building and operating Express (or similar) HTTP APIs at scale.
• Proven experience owning Tier-1, customer-facing transaction systems (e.g., posting, booking, marketplace flows) with strict availability, correctness, and latency expectations.
• Extensive AWS experience with production backends, ideally including EKS/Kubernetes, Lambda, MSK/Kafka, DocumentDB or MongoDB, and Secrets Manager/S3/CloudWatch, plus infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar).
• Strong background in event-driven and distributed systems using Kafka/MSK.
• Expertise with document databases, especially DocumentDB/MongoDB.
• Hands-on experience with zero/low-downtime migrations.
• Strong understanding of microservice and API contracts.
• Fluency with observability and on-call health, designing dashboards, APM traces, logs, and alerts; defining SLOs; and using these tools to drive down incident frequency and MTTR.
• Experience establishing and raising engineering standards for a team: PR and testing guidelines (unit/contract/integration/smoke/end-to-end), deployment validation checklists, and post-incident review practices.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: leading cross-team designs in ambiguous problem spaces, writing clear system design documents, operations runbooks, and driving alignment across Engineering, Product, and Operations.
• Proven mentoring track record, especially helping mid-level engineers grow in system design, observability, and operational excellence.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain trade-offs and system behavior clearly to engineers, product managers, and non-technical stakeholders.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, and AD&D insurance
• Parental Leave
• Flexible Vacation Time (FVT)
• An additional 10 holidays of paid time off per calendar year
• 401k matching (immediately vested)
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Short- and Long-term disability sick leave
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Health Savings Accounts
• Employee Assistance Program
• Employee Referral and Internal Recognition programs
• Wellness programs
• Free TriMet transit pass (Beaverton Office)

Pay

For Washington-based candidates, in compliance with the Washington State Pay Transparency Law, the salary range for this role is $183,000.00 - $260,000.00 plus target bonus. DAT considers factors such as scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience, education and training, core skills, internal equity, and market and business elements when extending an offer.