Staff Engineer, Backend Developer

Staff Engineer

Location:

Brooklyn, NY (in-office)

Compensation: $230K–$250K+ base salary, plus equity

Our client is seeking a Staff Engineer to architect and build entire systems and features as part of their founding engineering team. You'll work closely with the founders to shape the technical direction of their flagship product, rethinking from first principles how creative tools should function in the generative AI age. This is a high-impact role with significant ownership across the stack, where you'll design and implement scalable systems while helping set engineering standards for the company.

• Architect, build, and maintain core product systems and features.
• Work directly with the founding team to establish engineering best practices and long-term technical direction.
• Build rich, interactive applications with an emphasis on performance and usability.
• Context-switch across the stack — from frontend polish to backend infrastructure.
• Debug and optimize distributed systems supporting complex creative workflows.
• Solve challenging technical problems creatively, innovating where necessary.

• Full-Stack Mastery:
  Comfortable across frontend and backend, from editing CSS to tuning database queries.
• Frontend Expertise:
  Advanced skills with React, JavaScript/Typescript, HTML, CSS, and modern build systems (Webpack, ES6, etc).
• Backend Strength:
  Experience with Node.js and Postgres in production environments.
• Systems Knowledge:
  Proven experience designing, deploying, and debugging distributed systems.
• Product Focus:
  Deep experience building polished, interactive apps with high attention to design detail.
• Problem-Solver:
  Strong ability to tackle hard engineering challenges and drive solutions.
• ML Familiarity (Nice-to-Have):
  Exposure to ML-powered tools with user-friendly interfaces.
• Experience: 8+ years in engineering roles, with proven impact at scale.

• React, Next.js, Typescript
• Node.js, Postgres for backend
• APIs and Modal infrastructure