Staff Software Engineer, Platform

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Software Engineer, Platform based in the United States.

As a Staff Software Engineer, Platform, you will co-own the architecture and evolution of a core technology platform supporting a growing digital coaching marketplace.
You will play a pivotal role in scaling backend systems, improving reliability, and establishing engineering foundations that empower multiple product teams.
This hands-on technical leadership position combines architectural decision-making with substantial coding and system design responsibilities.
You will help shape platform strategy, drive infrastructure improvements, and ensure the platform remains secure, scalable, and resilient.
Working in an AI-native engineering environment, you will help optimize development workflows and build systems that support both engineers and AI agents.
You will collaborate closely with engineering, product, and cross-functional teams in a remote-first, asynchronous, and fast-moving startup environment.
This is an opportunity to influence technical direction at a pivotal growth stage while contributing to a mission-driven product that supports frontline professionals.

Accountabilities:

• Co-own the architecture, technical direction, and long-term health of the core platform, including its backend, database, APIs, background jobs, and internal administrative tools.

• Develop and maintain foundational platform capabilities used by multiple engineering squads, including stable APIs, service contracts, CI/CD pipelines, deployment environments, feature flags, observability, and on-call infrastructure.

• Lead end-to-end scalability initiatives by identifying and resolving bottlenecks across databases, queues, caching layers, and third-party integrations before they affect customers.

• Evaluate architectural trade-offs between maintaining the existing monolith and introducing services, queues, or event-driven boundaries where they provide measurable value.

• Document architectural decisions and implement migrations safely, minimizing disruption to existing systems and dependent teams.

• Build AI-ready platform infrastructure through modular architecture, efficient CI pipelines, reliable test environments, and secure, auditable access to production evidence.

• Strengthen platform reliability, security, and compliance through robust multi-tenant data isolation, access controls, audit trails, and incident response practices aligned with SOC 2 requirements.

• Collaborate with engineering teams through design reviews, code reviews, technical mentorship, and hands-on problem-solving to maintain consistency and quality across the platform.

• Partner with Product and other engineering squads to establish priorities, evaluate roadmap trade-offs, and balance platform investments against feature development.

• Drive the adoption of AI coding agents throughout the software development lifecycle, including implementation, code review, testing, incident triage, and maintenance.

• Establish effective guardrails, verification workflows, and human approval processes to ensure AI-assisted development remains reliable and secure.

• Contribute directly to production code while setting engineering standards and helping the team deliver maintainable, scalable, and high-quality software.

Requirements:

• At least 8 years of experience building and operating production backend systems, including recent experience at Staff Engineer, Lead Engineer, or equivalent technical leadership level.

• Strong product mindset, with the ability to understand customer needs, challenge assumptions, and collaborate with Product and Design teams to shape technical and product roadmaps.

• Extensive platform engineering experience, including ownership of infrastructure, deployment pipelines, runtime environments, and operational systems for a growing product.

• Demonstrated experience scaling production systems through significant growth, including identifying performance bottlenecks, investigating root causes, and implementing effective solutions.

• Strong relational database expertise, particularly with MySQL or PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, indexing, and migrations involving live production data.

• Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS, as well as containers, infrastructure as code, and CI/CD practices.

• Experience designing and operating asynchronous and distributed systems, including queues, workers, webhooks, idempotency, and retry mechanisms.

• Proven ability to establish technical direction, influence engineering teams, and drive architectural decisions without relying on formal management authority.

• Daily, hands-on experience with AI coding agents, including understanding their capabilities, limitations, and the processes needed to review and validate generated code.

• Experience developing AI agent tooling or engineering harnesses, such as skills, MCP servers, evaluation loops, or guardrails for agents interacting with production systems.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation and explain architectural trade-offs to engineers and product stakeholders.

• Preferred qualifications: Experience with PHP and Laravel, including Horizon, Nova, and queues. Candidates with strong backgrounds in Go, Python, Ruby, Node.js, Java, or similar technologies are also encouraged to apply.

• Experience modernizing or decomposing monolithic applications without relying on disruptive, large-scale rewrites.

• Familiarity with observability tools such as Sentry, Datadog, or equivalent platforms, along with incident management and response.

• Experience with SOC 2, HIPAA, or other compliance frameworks in production environments.

• Experience integrating scheduling, calendar, SMS, or email providers at scale.

Benefits:

• Fully remote work environment within the United States.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• Flexible paid time off (PTO).

• 401(k) retirement plan with company matching.

• Access to professional performance coaches and coaching services offered to clients.

• Opportunity to join a rapidly growing Series A company backed by leading investors.

• Meaningful work supporting the health, performance, and well-being of first responders and other frontline professionals.

• Significant technical ownership and influence over platform architecture and engineering strategy.

• Collaborative, remote-first, and asynchronous-friendly culture with minimal unnecessary processes.

• Opportunity to shape engineering practices in an AI-native development environment.

 

How Jobgether works: We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role's core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team. We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!  Why Apply Through Jobgether?    Data Privacy Notice: By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Jobgether will process your personal data to evaluate your candidacy and share relevant information with the hiring employer. This processing is based on legitimate interest and pre-contractual measures under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR). You may exercise your rights (access, rectification, erasure, objection) at any time.     #LI-CL1