Senior Software Engineer, Back-End (San Francisco)
About The Position
Short Story is an award-winning, technology-powered retailer dedicated to petite women 5'4" and under. Our mission is to create a seamless shopping experience for millions of petite women so they can dress with effortless confidence. As a fast-growing startup, we're revolutionizing retail with a data-driven learning system that leverages customer feedback to create tailored products. We've been recognized by top publications like Forbes, Fortune and are backed by top investors who share our vision of building the world's next great consumer brand. We're building a company with intention and purpose. Our culture thrives on data insights, exceptional commitment to fit, and the urgency to move quickly on what matters. We're rethinking how online shopping works: from inventory and logistics to personalization and fit, because the standard playbook doesn’t work for our customers. That means building systems that don’t fit neatly into existing patterns. If you’re excited by designing systems from first principles and working on problems without obvious answers, you’ll feel at home here. You’ll be part of a fast-moving engineering team building the systems that power our customer experience, warehouse operations, and data platform. We value engineers who take ownership, move quickly, and are comfortable figuring things out as they go. As a Senior Backend Engineer, you’ll design and build the services that power our core workflows, from order processing to logistics and internal operations. You’ll own meaningful parts of the system end-to-end, making decisions about data models, APIs, and system behavior. You’ll work closely with product, frontend, and operations to ensure what we build is reliable, scalable, and actually solves the problem.
Requirements
- 5+ years of software development experience
- 2+ Years of Python experience
- 5+ years of experience with data structures and algorithms
- Familiar with infrastructure, monitoring, and CI/CD practices
- Familiar with the following technologies: A Python web framework, Testing frameworks, Containerized workloads (Docker), Relational database (Postgres preferred) and SQL
- Focus on communication and documentation
- Experience designing stable, scalable, and well-documented APIs
Nice To Haves
- Test-driven development (TDD) experience
- Tech Lead for an engineering team of 3+ people
- Proven track record running large-scale distributed systems
- Worked in sprint-based environments
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain backend services that power core business workflows
- Own projects end-to-end, from early design through production and iteration
- Design APIs and data models that are clear, stable, and easy to work with
- Work across systems (orders, inventory, logistics, data) to solve complex, interconnected problems
- Make thoughtful tradeoffs between speed, scalability, and maintainability
- Improve system reliability through monitoring, testing, and debugging
- Contribute to engineering standards, code reviews, and documentation
Benefits
- Generous Paid Time Off
- Comprehensive health, vision, and dental care
- 401k with company match (US)
- Employee discount on merchandise
- Opportunity to work at a Y-Combinator backed startup with a dedicated and experienced founding team
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
