Staff Backend Engineer

Bettermode • Toronto, ON

1d • CA$175,000 - CA$200,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

At Bettermode, we are redefining how businesses streamline customer experiences and foster strong relationships. Our platform empowers businesses to seamlessly craft powerful web apps with engagement tools in its core tailored to their unique needs. Backed by Silicon Valley investors and trusted by brands like Lenovo, Mercedes, and IBM, we're proud to connect millions of end-users daily. Join us as we continue building tools that redefine customer engagement! This role is for a builder who carries a product from scrappy prototype, through real users in beta, to production-grade — same hands the whole way through. We are looking for a Staff Frontend Engineer who wants to build and own the next generation of Bettermode products. You will join a small team of seasoned developers where high autonomy and high technical standards are the default.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in the TypeScript ecosystem and modern tooling. You write clean, modular code that scales and is easy to test and maintain.
• Before reaching for the keyboard, you understand who an ask is for, why it matters, and what problem they are actually trying to solve. Critically, you can spot when the request isn't the real problem to solve.
• You can tell the difference between code that needs to survive five years and code that's a learning prototype — and you make those calls knowing you'll be the one living with them later. Today's shortcut to prove the value is built easy to throw away, so the production-grade version can replace it cleanly when it's time to scale. You don't over-engineer throwaways, and you don't cut corners on the load-bearing parts.
• You work with Claude Code, Cursor, or a custom rig as a daily force multiplier, not just autocomplete. You've made it work on non-trivial problems and know where AI accelerates and where it actively gets in the way.
• You thrive in a startup where requirements evolve. You take a business goal and translate it into shipped product with minimal supervision.

Nice To Haves

• Led a new product from zero. You took something with rough requirements and made the ownership-level calls — what to build, what to defer, what to abandon — to turn it into shipped product.
• Prior Staff-level (or equivalent) experience at a software company where you were a peer to Product and Design, not someone they handed work to.
• Strong product instinct, with examples. Specific times you reshaped or walked away from work because of what you learned from real customers.
• Experience with multi-tenant systems and the constraints they impose on every architectural decision.

Responsibilities

• Operate across the stack. Lead complex backend work in TypeScript and NestJS — event-driven systems on Kafka, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, and AI pipelines — while reaching into the frontend when the problem demands it.
• Build AI into the product. Integrate LLMs into real customer-facing workflows. Work with nondeterministic outputs, design for trust, and ship AI features that actually work in production rather than demoing well.
• Raise the engineering bar. Your code reviews shape how mid-level engineers grow. Your judgment shapes what the team ships. Mentorship and review are part of the job, not stretch goals.

Benefits

• Location-based, competitive compensation that reflects your expertise and impact, with annual reviews
• Comprehensive Canadian health benefits — dental and vision included
• Unlimited paid vacation days
• Paid parental leave
• Bereavement leave
• All the equipment you need provided, or you can bring your own device and access our Device Upgrade Policy — an interest-free hardware stipend repayable via payroll deductions
• Monthly Tech & Appreciation Stipend
• Complimentary snacks, coffee, video games, and board games at the office
• Globally diverse and collaborative team environment

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed