Staff Engineer, Backend Developer

At Thorn, our cause is our code. We are a nonprofit whose mission of defending children from sexual exploitation and abuse is deeply embedded within our core—a shared code that drives us to do challenging work with resilience and determination.

Here, you’ll work and grow among the best hearts and the best minds in tech, data, and business alongside our network of independent partners, NGOs, and law enforcement agencies. Together, we’re focused on building technology that protects children’s futures. We are looking for dynamic problem solvers with the desire to help address some of today’s toughest issues. You’ll collaborate with a diverse group of peers in a remote environment centered on wellness, care, and compassion.

In 2019, we took the stage at TED and shared our audacious goal of eliminating child sexual abuse material from the internet. Come join us to help make this goal a reality and build a world where every child can be safe, curious, and happy.

Our Safer team develops and operates backend services, APIs, and high-volume data-processing pipelines that help technology companies detect and respond to child sexual abuse material on their platforms. As a Staff Engineer, you will lead high-impact initiatives within the Safer product area, shaping how our systems are designed, built, scaled, and maintained.

In this role, you will drive the design and delivery of complex, multi-system projects, anticipate technical risks, and make sound architectural and implementation decisions that improve reliability, performance, and long-term sustainability in service of Thorn’s mission. You partner closely with Product and Engineering to translate broad goals into actionable technical plans and ensure successful delivery. Through technical leadership, proactive collaboration, and strong ownership, you elevate the quality and maintainability of our products and strengthen how your team and the broader Build organization builds and operates our systems.

• Collaborate with engineers across multiple areas of ownership to build and maintain scalable systems and applications from end-to-end.
• Take on large, complex initiatives independently. You identify unknowns, gather input from teammates, break down ambiguous problems, and communicate progress clearly to stakeholders.
• Lead technical discussions across teams, partnering closely with Build and Product to define requirements and arrive together at practical, high-quality approaches.
• Develop solutions to problems faced by our users, clearly articulating tradeoffs and decisions to stakeholders across technical and non-technical audiences, and incorporating feedback into iterative improvements.
• Take ownership of architectural direction, making sound implementation decisions that strengthen system reliability, scalability, and sustainability over the long term.
• Play a critical role in day-to-day coding, code reviews, and troubleshooting production issues, including participating in on‑call rotations to support system reliability and incident response.
• Anticipate technical risks and proactively address them, including identifying and prioritizing technical debt before it becomes a larger constraint.
• Strengthen teams by sharing expertise, offering thoughtful feedback, mentoring teammates within your domain, and stepping in to help when needed, even outside your primary area of expertise.
• Drive technical innovation by researching and deliberately incorporating new tools, technologies, or patterns where they meaningfully improve our products and workflows.

Required qualifications and capabilities:

• You have a commitment to putting the children we serve at the center of everything you do.
• You have substantial experience…