Staff Software Engineer - $200K - $300K

Staff Software Engineers: Let 250+ Companies Compete For YouFonzi is an AI recruiting company.No job boards. No recruiter spam. Companies request to interview you and submit salary bids upfront.Every week, hiring managers at 250+ pre-vetted startups in NYC and San Francisco review a curated group of engineers. They're reading profiles optimized by our team to surface what matters: what you've built, how you think about systems, and whether you're the kind of engineer who ships.Companies on Fonzi are Applied AI startups, Frontier labs, Hypergrowth startups, PE firms starting lean AI teams and more. They're backed by investors like A16z, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Y Combinator and more.How It Works5-minute applicationWe reach out, learn what you're building and what excites you, and optimize your profileHiring managers review the cohort and request interviews with candidates they wantCompanies submit competing salary bids directly to youYou only interview where you're genuinely interestedCompletely free. We have an iMessage agent + humans in the loop you can text anytime w/ questions or requests to help handle scheduling and coordinationWho We're Looking ForThe staff engineers who do best on Fonzi:Have set the technical direction for systems that serve real users at scaleLead through architecture, code review and mentorship, while still shipping code themselvesHave led projects across teams and made the hard tradeoffs on reliability, speed and costAre using AI in how they build, and know how to design systems around LLMsThrive in startup environments where the problem is ambiguous and the team is smallHave 7-12 years of experience, ideally with experience at at least one high-growth companyWhat You'll BuildThe companies on Fonzi are working on:Core platforms and architectures that carry a startup from product-market fit to scaleAI-native products where LLMs, agents and retrieval sit at the center of the systemDistributed systems, data infrastructure and APIs built to handle 10x growthEngineering standards and teams, as the senior technical voice next to the foundersSystems trusted by enterprise customers in fintech, healthcare and legalCompensation$200,000 to $300,000+ base salary depending on experience and role. Many positions include meaningful equity at pre-seed through Series B stage companies.The Interview Process (Typical)Screening conversation looking for communication skills, cultural fit and technical leadershipSystem design deep-dive on architecting a real system end-to-endCoding or pairing session, plus a conversation on how you've led teams and projectsIf you want to be the engineer who shapes how a company builds, we want to hear from you.