Staff Backend Engineer

Arena Club•San Francisco, CA

2d•$220,000 - $270,000

About The Position

We’re seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to help scale the backbone of our platform and expand into new product categories. You'll design, build, and ship across greenfield products and inherited systems with full accountability from scoping to production. This includes working on backend systems that directly impact product success and scalability: loyalty programs, architecture migration & modernization, real-time pricing and checkout, and localization for global expansion.

Requirements

8+ years of experience as a professional backend engineer
Strong proficiency in Node.js, TypeScript, and Postgres
Proven experience building and scaling eCommerce or online marketplace platforms
Strong observability experience, including Datadog, custom metrics, dashboards, tracing, and alerting
Experience with feature flagging, experimentation, and progressive rollouts
Passion for using the latest AI coding tools and AI-driven best practices to enhance development workflows
Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS, and infrastructure-as-code tooling such as Terraform
Experience setting engineering best practices, making architectural decisions, and influencing technical direction across teams
Ability to move fast and iterate quickly in a startup environment while maintaining high engineering standards
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to communicate technical trade-offs effectively

Nice To Haves

Experience working with an in-house AI harness is preferred

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain scalable backend applications and APIs using Node.js, TypeScript, Redis, Postgres, and BullMQ
Leverage AI-powered coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) to improve development speed, code quality, and system reliability
Architect and optimize systems for high scalability and performance as the business rapidly expands
Implement third-party integrations and external APIs to enhance the platform’s capabilities
Use feature flagging platforms to safely roll out, test, and monitor new backend capabilities in production
Own production reliability through strong observability practices, including dashboards, custom metrics, alerting, distributed tracing, logging, and service-level monitoring
Develop and maintain internal tools that support fulfillment operations, internal workflows, and machine learning initiatives
Set backend engineering standards and guide architectural decisions to ensure long-term scalability, performance, and reliability
Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, shaping the culture and velocity of a growing team
Collaborate cross-functionally with product, data, and frontend teams to ship high-impact features quickly
Ensure backend systems are secure, well-documented, and thoroughly tested