Staff Software Engineer-Backend

About the role

You will set the technical direction for the backend platform that connects fans and talent to create the perfect video shoutout; and you'll make it fast, reliable, and ready for the next order of magnitude of scale. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll architect the core services behind our website and mobile app, own the hardest distributed-systems and data problems, and raise the engineering bar for the teams around you.

Responsibilities

• You'll design the event-driven and API architecture that ties everything together
• You'll partner closely with product, data, and platform teams
• You'll help define how we build with AI; from using agentic coding tools to move faster, to designing the AI-powered systems that make Cameo better
• You won't just ship features; you'll define how we build, where we invest, and how we stay reliable as we grow

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional backend engineering experience, with deep expertise in node.js (express, async patterns, etc.)
• A track record of designing and operating distributed systems serving millions of users in production
• Expert-level data modeling with NoSQL (Mongo), and good judgment on when relational or other stores fit better
• Experience designing event-driven and streaming architectures (Kafka/Confluent, queues, pub/sub)
• You've built and owned high-throughput, low-latency REST (and/or async) APIs as long-lived platforms, not one-offs
• Security-minded across authn/authz, data protection, and supply-chain risk
• Strong cloud-native chops on AWS
• AI fluency: you use agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) to multiply your output, and you help set the standards for how the team builds with AI; including designing agentic and AI-powered systems into the platform

Qualifications

• You set technical direction across teams and mentor engineers, leading through influence rather than authority
• You have a strong product sense and connect technical decisions to real user and business impact
• You're a doer who thrives in ambiguity and bring others along with you
• You love building and scaling, and you raise the bar for everyone around you

Skills

• Node.js (express, async patterns, etc.)
• Distributed systems
• NoSQL (Mongo)
• Event-driven and streaming architectures (Kafka/Confluent, queues, pub/sub)
• High-throughput, low-latency REST (and/or async) APIs
• Security
• Cloud-native
• AI fluency (agentic coding tools, AI-powered systems)

Benefits

• Health insurance
• 401(K)
• Fun work environment at our Downtown Chicago Headquarters
• Opportunities to meet Cameo Talent!

Pay

The salary range for this position is $175,000 to $215,000 with opportunities for additional compensation based on performance. Cameo determines salary ranges by role and level with ranges for US roles typically based on our home market of Chicago. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Within that range, individual pay is determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education and training.

Schedule

Not specified