Staff Engineer, Composer Platform

Finalsite•Glastonbury, CT

12d•Remote

About The Position

The Staff Engineer, Composer Platform will provide technical leadership for Finalsite’s core CMS platform used by educational institutions nationwide. This role will lead architectural modernization efforts, improve platform scalability and observability, and drive long-term engineering strategy for a high-traffic, customer-facing application environment. The Staff Engineer will lead a critical modernization effort focused on decoupling the Composer platform from a legacy architecture, defining and executing a scalable long-term solution while maintaining platform stability. The role will also elevate engineering standards across the team by strengthening architecture practices, improving observability, and fostering a culture of proactive problem-solving, operational accountability, and technical excellence.

Requirements

At least 12 years of experience as Staff Engineer or senior-level individual contributor supporting large-scale production platforms
Strong experience with Ruby/Rails or comparable backend application frameworks
Experience leading modernization, migration, or architectural decoupling initiatives
Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and application resiliency principles
Experience with observability tools, monitoring frameworks, and alerting strategies
Experience supporting containerized applications and scalable production environments
Strong communication, technical leadership, and cross-functional collaboration skills
Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Codex, or similar technologies

Nice To Haves

Experience with JRuby or polyglot application environments
Familiarity with MongoDB or shared-database architectures
Experience supporting legacy web platform modernization initiatives
Experience working within complex or multi-acquisition codebases
Familiarity with Cloudflare Workers or edge-computing technologies
Background supporting EdTech, SaaS, or multi-tenant platform environments

Responsibilities

Define and lead technical strategy, architecture, and modernization initiatives for the Composer platform
Drive decoupling and migration efforts from legacy application dependencies while maintaining platform stability
Improve platform reliability, scalability, observability, and operational resilience
Establish engineering standards related to instrumentation, monitoring, alerting, and system performance
Lead architecture review practices and collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams on technical decisions
Support distributed systems and containerized application environments
Provide technical mentorship and guidance through code reviews, design feedback, and engineering best practices
Utilize AI-assisted development tools to support codebase navigation, modernization, and platform evolution