Staff Platform Engineer
Quanta · San Francisco, CA · 3 wk ago
On-siteEngineeringFull-time
We need to output HTML fragment with sections: About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule. Only include sections that have real specific content. We must not repeat job title. Must not include Job ID etc. Must preserve all substantive info, no invented details. Remove boilerplate.
We need to parse the posting: It's a job description for Staff Engineer on Platform team at Quanta.
We need to extract sections: About the role (intro), Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule.
We need to decide what content belongs where.
The posting includes:
- Intro: "We're building a new system of record for finance..." etc. That's about the company and role context. Could be "About the role" or maybe "About the company". We'll put as About the role.
- Then "The Team" description: small team, in-person SF, expertise. Could be part of About the role.
- Then "As a Staff Engineer on the Platform team, you'll work on the foundational systems..." That's responsibilities.
- Then "What We’re Looking For" bullet list: 10+ years experience, deep backend, etc. That's requirements/qualifications/skills.
- Then "Bonus points for experience with financial systems..." etc.
- Then "You are excited about working in person with a collaborative team in San Francisco." That's maybe location/requirements.
- Then "This Role Is Not for You If…" list of disqualifiers.
- Then "Why Quanta" bullet list: Build a category, Join early enough, Learn directly..., Grow with the company.
- Then "Benefits" list: Competitive early-stage salary, Competitive early-stage equity, Health..., 401(k), Take-what-you-need paid vacation, Commuter benefits, Wellness stipend, Paid lunches and dinners in the office, All the equipment and tools you need.
- No explicit Pay or Schedule details besides "Competitive early-stage salary" (that's pay) and maybe schedule not mentioned. So we can include Pay section with that line? The rule: only include Pay if posting actually states them. It does state "Competitive early-stage salary". So we can include Pay section with that. Schedule: not mentioned, so omit.
- Benefits section: we have list.
- Skills: maybe we can extract from requirements: strong systems thinking, API design, data modeling, etc. Could be Skills.
- Qualifications: maybe the 10+ years experience, deep backend, etc.
- Responsibilities: the description of what you'll do.
- About the role: company intro and team.
We must not repeat job title. Must not include Job ID etc.
We must not include boilerplate like cookie/navigation/legal/EEO etc. Not present.
We must not include duplicated lines.
We must preserve all substantive info; do not invent or summarize away detail. So we need to keep the specifics.
We need to use for section headings. Use
for section headings. Use - for any list of duties/requirements/benefits, and
for prose.
We need to decide what is a list vs prose.
We'll create sections:
About the role
... (intro + team description)
Responsibilities
- ...
Requirements
- ...
Qualifications
- ...
Skills
- ...
Benefits
- ...
Pay
Competitive early-stage salary
We must not include Schedule.
Now we need to extract content precisely.
Let's extract About the role:
Original text:
"We're building a new system of record for finance, one that understands not just the numbers, but the business context behind them. At its core is our Operational Ledger: a financial data layer that preserves every event, calculation, policy, source, and decision behind the financials, rather than reducing them to contextless entries. Questions that once took weeks to answer become as routine as a Google search: Why did margins change? Which customers are actually profitable? How are we tracking against budget? We're not bolting AI onto legacy software. Quanta was built from the ground up around granular financial data, flexible primitives, and systems that agents can safely understand and act on. We've spent years closing the books for real, fast-growing companies and turning what we learn into product. We've already replaced much of what QuickBooks and NetSuite can do and the manual work surrounding them. Customers are now turning off legacy accounting systems and moving to Quanta. We're still early. The problems are hard, the ambition is enormous, and there's no playbook for what we're building. The Team We're a small, tight-knit team working together in person in downtown San Francisco. Our team brings together deep expertise in engineering and finance. We've built accounting systems at Affirm, ledgers at Stripe and Robinhood, launched products from 0→1, scaled infrastructure processing billions of dollars, built finance functions, and closed the books under real operating pressure. We understand our customers because we have been in their shoes. Quanta's earliest product was built around a few principles we still value: get to learning as quickly as possible, find the simplest solution that works, and build alongside real users and real-world edge cases. Quanta is for people who want ownership, prioritize learning and outcomes over conventional playbooks, and are comfortable figuring things out as they go. We move quickly, but we are building systems where correctness and trust matter deeply. That tension—moving fast while building durable foundations—is at the heart of the engineering problems we work on."
We need to put that into a paragraph. Might be long but okay.
Now Responsibilities:
"As a Staff Engineer on the Platform team, you'll work on the foundational systems that Quanta's product and engineering teams build on top of. You'll own problems where architecture, correctness, reliability, and developer leverage matter—and where the right abstraction can unlock an entire category of product capabilities. You'll operate across team boundaries, identifying the technical investments that matter most and driving them from ambiguous problem to production."
That's responsibilities.
Now Requirements:
From "What We’re Looking For":
"10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building and owning complex backend, platform, or distributed systems in production.
Deep backend and distributed systems experience, particularly with systems where correctness, reliability, and data integrity matter.
Strong systems thinking, including API design, data modeling, system boundaries, failure modes, and operational tradeoffs.
Excellent technical judgment and the ability to distinguish between problems that require durable infrastructure and those where the simplest solution is the right one.
Strong debugging instincts and comfort working through difficult problems across application, data, and infrastructure layers.
Ability to create clarity from ambiguity and independently identify the highest-leverage technical problems to solve.
Strong communication and collaboration skills, particularly when translating complex technical tradeoffs for engineers and non-engineers.
A hands-on mindset. You want to design systems and build them."
That's requirements.
Now Qualifications:
Maybe "Bonus points for experience with financial systems, ledgers, accounting infrastructure, data platforms, developer platforms, or other systems where correctness and auditability are critical."
Also "You are excited about working in person with a collaborative team in San Francisco."
Also maybe "This Role Is Not for You If…" but that's disqualifiers, not qualifications. Could be part of Requirements? But we can treat as Qualifications? The instruction: we should include sections only when posting has real specific content. We have content for Qualifications: bonus points and location excitement. We'll put those as Qualifications.
Now Skills:
Maybe we can extract from responsibilities: architecture, correctness, reliability, developer leverage, abstraction, etc. But we already used those in Requirements. Could separate: Skills could be technical skills like API design, data modeling, debugging, communication, etc. But we already have those in Requirements. To avoid duplication, we could assign some to Skills: e.g., "API design, data modeling, system boundaries, failure modes, operational tradeoffs", "debugging across application, data, infrastructure layers", "communication and collaboration", "hands-on mindset designing and building systems". However we must not invent or summarize away detail; we can just move some bullet points to Skills. But we need to preserve all substantive info; we can split the list across Requirements and Skills arbitrarily as long as we keep all info. However we risk duplication if we put same content in both. Better to assign distinct categories: Requirements: years of experience, deep backend experience, ability to create clarity, etc. Skills: systems thinking, API design, data modeling, debugging, communication, hands-on mindset. Qualifications: bonus points, location excitement.
Let's define:
Requirements (must-have):
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building and owning complex backend, platform, or distributed systems in production.
- Deep backend and distributed systems experience, particularly with systems where correctness, reliability, and data integrity matter.
- Excellent technical judgment and the ability to distinguish between problems that require durable infrastructure and those where the simplest solution is the right one.
- Ability to create clarity from ambiguity and independently identify the highest-leverage technical problems to solve.
- A hands-on mindset. You want to design systems and build them.
Skills (specific technical and soft skills):
- Strong systems thinking, including API design, data modeling, system boundaries, failure modes, and operational tradeoffs.
- Strong debugging instincts and comfort working through difficult problems across application, data, and infrastructure layers.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, particularly when translating complex technical tradeoffs for engineers and non-engineers.
Qualifications (nice-to-have):
- Bonus points for experience with financial systems, ledgers, accounting infrastructure, data platforms, developer platforms, or other systems where correctness and auditability are critical.
- You are excited about working in person with a collaborative team in San Francisco.
Now Benefits list as given.
Pay: Competitive early-stage salary.
Now we need to ensure we don't include any boilerplate like "Competitive early-stage equity" etc. That's benefits.
Now we need to output HTML fragment only.
Let's craft.
We'll wrap each section with heading then content.
For About the role: we can put the long paragraph as
. Might need to preserve line breaks? Not needed.
We'll escape any HTML special characters? The text includes apostrophes, em dashes, etc. Should be fine as plain text.
We'll output:
About the role
We're building a new system of record for finance, one that understands not just the numbers, but the business context behind them. At its core is our Operational Ledger: a financial data layer that preserves every event, calculation, policy, source, and decision behind the financials, rather than reducing them to contextless entries. Questions that once took weeks to answer become as routine as a Google search: Why did margins change? Which customers are actually profitable? How are we tracking against budget? We're not bolting AI onto legacy software. Quanta was built from the ground up around granular financial data, flexible primitives, and systems that agents can safely understand and act on. We've spent years closing the books for real, fast-growing companies and turning what we learn into product. We've already replaced much of what QuickBooks and NetSuite can do and the manual work surrounding them. Customers are now turning off legacy accounting systems and moving to Quanta. We're still early. The problems are hard, the ambition is enormous, and there's no playbook for what we're building. The Team We're a small, tight-knit team working together in person in downtown San Francisco. Our team brings together deep expertise in engineering and finance. We've built accounting systems at Affirm, ledgers at Stripe and Robinhood, launched products from 0→1, scaled infrastructure processing billions of dollars, built finance functions, and closed the books under real operating pressure. We understand our customers because we have been in their shoes. Quanta's earliest product was built around a few
for prose. We need to decide what is a list vs prose. We'll create sections:
About the role
... (intro + team description)
Responsibilities
- ...
Requirements
- ...
Qualifications
- ...
Skills
- ...
Benefits
- ...
Pay
Competitive early-stage salary
We must not include Schedule. Now we need to extract content precisely. Let's extract About the role: Original text: "We're building a new system of record for finance, one that understands not just the numbers, but the business context behind them. At its core is our Operational Ledger: a financial data layer that preserves every event, calculation, policy, source, and decision behind the financials, rather than reducing them to contextless entries. Questions that once took weeks to answer become as routine as a Google search: Why did margins change? Which customers are actually profitable? How are we tracking against budget? We're not bolting AI onto legacy software. Quanta was built from the ground up around granular financial data, flexible primitives, and systems that agents can safely understand and act on. We've spent years closing the books for real, fast-growing companies and turning what we learn into product. We've already replaced much of what QuickBooks and NetSuite can do and the manual work surrounding them. Customers are now turning off legacy accounting systems and moving to Quanta. We're still early. The problems are hard, the ambition is enormous, and there's no playbook for what we're building. The Team We're a small, tight-knit team working together in person in downtown San Francisco. Our team brings together deep expertise in engineering and finance. We've built accounting systems at Affirm, ledgers at Stripe and Robinhood, launched products from 0→1, scaled infrastructure processing billions of dollars, built finance functions, and closed the books under real operating pressure. We understand our customers because we have been in their shoes. Quanta's earliest product was built around a few principles we still value: get to learning as quickly as possible, find the simplest solution that works, and build alongside real users and real-world edge cases. Quanta is for people who want ownership, prioritize learning and outcomes over conventional playbooks, and are comfortable figuring things out as they go. We move quickly, but we are building systems where correctness and trust matter deeply. That tension—moving fast while building durable foundations—is at the heart of the engineering problems we work on." We need to put that into a paragraph. Might be long but okay. Now Responsibilities: "As a Staff Engineer on the Platform team, you'll work on the foundational systems that Quanta's product and engineering teams build on top of. You'll own problems where architecture, correctness, reliability, and developer leverage matter—and where the right abstraction can unlock an entire category of product capabilities. You'll operate across team boundaries, identifying the technical investments that matter most and driving them from ambiguous problem to production." That's responsibilities. Now Requirements: From "What We’re Looking For": "10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building and owning complex backend, platform, or distributed systems in production. Deep backend and distributed systems experience, particularly with systems where correctness, reliability, and data integrity matter. Strong systems thinking, including API design, data modeling, system boundaries, failure modes, and operational tradeoffs. Excellent technical judgment and the ability to distinguish between problems that require durable infrastructure and those where the simplest solution is the right one. Strong debugging instincts and comfort working through difficult problems across application, data, and infrastructure layers. Ability to create clarity from ambiguity and independently identify the highest-leverage technical problems to solve. Strong communication and collaboration skills, particularly when translating complex technical tradeoffs for engineers and non-engineers. A hands-on mindset. You want to design systems and build them." That's requirements. Now Qualifications: Maybe "Bonus points for experience with financial systems, ledgers, accounting infrastructure, data platforms, developer platforms, or other systems where correctness and auditability are critical." Also "You are excited about working in person with a collaborative team in San Francisco." Also maybe "This Role Is Not for You If…" but that's disqualifiers, not qualifications. Could be part of Requirements? But we can treat as Qualifications? The instruction: we should include sections only when posting has real specific content. We have content for Qualifications: bonus points and location excitement. We'll put those as Qualifications. Now Skills: Maybe we can extract from responsibilities: architecture, correctness, reliability, developer leverage, abstraction, etc. But we already used those in Requirements. Could separate: Skills could be technical skills like API design, data modeling, debugging, communication, etc. But we already have those in Requirements. To avoid duplication, we could assign some to Skills: e.g., "API design, data modeling, system boundaries, failure modes, operational tradeoffs", "debugging across application, data, infrastructure layers", "communication and collaboration", "hands-on mindset designing and building systems". However we must not invent or summarize away detail; we can just move some bullet points to Skills. But we need to preserve all substantive info; we can split the list across Requirements and Skills arbitrarily as long as we keep all info. However we risk duplication if we put same content in both. Better to assign distinct categories: Requirements: years of experience, deep backend experience, ability to create clarity, etc. Skills: systems thinking, API design, data modeling, debugging, communication, hands-on mindset. Qualifications: bonus points, location excitement. Let's define: Requirements (must-have): - 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building and owning complex backend, platform, or distributed systems in production. - Deep backend and distributed systems experience, particularly with systems where correctness, reliability, and data integrity matter. - Excellent technical judgment and the ability to distinguish between problems that require durable infrastructure and those where the simplest solution is the right one. - Ability to create clarity from ambiguity and independently identify the highest-leverage technical problems to solve. - A hands-on mindset. You want to design systems and build them. Skills (specific technical and soft skills): - Strong systems thinking, including API design, data modeling, system boundaries, failure modes, and operational tradeoffs. - Strong debugging instincts and comfort working through difficult problems across application, data, and infrastructure layers. - Strong communication and collaboration skills, particularly when translating complex technical tradeoffs for engineers and non-engineers. Qualifications (nice-to-have): - Bonus points for experience with financial systems, ledgers, accounting infrastructure, data platforms, developer platforms, or other systems where correctness and auditability are critical. - You are excited about working in person with a collaborative team in San Francisco. Now Benefits list as given. Pay: Competitive early-stage salary. Now we need to ensure we don't include any boilerplate like "Competitive early-stage equity" etc. That's benefits. Now we need to output HTML fragment only. Let's craft. We'll wrap each section withheading then content. For About the role: we can put the long paragraph as
. Might need to preserve line breaks? Not needed. We'll escape any HTML special characters? The text includes apostrophes, em dashes, etc. Should be fine as plain text. We'll output:
About the role
We're building a new system of record for finance, one that understands not just the numbers, but the business context behind them. At its core is our Operational Ledger: a financial data layer that preserves every event, calculation, policy, source, and decision behind the financials, rather than reducing them to contextless entries. Questions that once took weeks to answer become as routine as a Google search: Why did margins change? Which customers are actually profitable? How are we tracking against budget? We're not bolting AI onto legacy software. Quanta was built from the ground up around granular financial data, flexible primitives, and systems that agents can safely understand and act on. We've spent years closing the books for real, fast-growing companies and turning what we learn into product. We've already replaced much of what QuickBooks and NetSuite can do and the manual work surrounding them. Customers are now turning off legacy accounting systems and moving to Quanta. We're still early. The problems are hard, the ambition is enormous, and there's no playbook for what we're building. The Team We're a small, tight-knit team working together in person in downtown San Francisco. Our team brings together deep expertise in engineering and finance. We've built accounting systems at Affirm, ledgers at Stripe and Robinhood, launched products from 0→1, scaled infrastructure processing billions of dollars, built finance functions, and closed the books under real operating pressure. We understand our customers because we have been in their shoes. Quanta's earliest product was built around a few