Staff Software Engineer

Tightknit

12d•Hybrid

About The Position

Hi 👋 I’m Stephen, Co-Founder and CTO at Tightknit. We are on a mission to revolutionize online communities with an innovative platform built for trust, engagement, and connection, especially meeting members where they are within an app they already love: Slack. Tightknit powers customer and developer communities for teams like Clay, MotherDuck, Mixpanel, Vanta, Gamma, and Stripe. Our vision is to make communities a bastion of genuine human relationship and the OS for every business’s sales & marketing team. And we are hiring our first Founding Engineer to help us build that future! As an early engineer, you will: Work directly with the CTO, Define architecture, not just implement it, Shape product direction, not just execute it, Own systems end-to-end (design → implementation → monitoring → iteration), Interact directly with customers, Build internal AI workflows to accelerate our velocity, Help determine how engineering operates here, Wear many hats and operate independently with high accountability. This isn’t just a coding role. It is a seat at the table. In fact, while programming knowledge matters, in the AI age it’s becoming less and less central to our day-to-day work. So who are we really looking for? Engineer with taste - Put away the IDE for a moment and put on your PM hat. We trust in your ability to talk to customers, synthesize their asks, and create excellent products with extreme level of thoughtfulness and detail. You hold yourself and your work to a high bar. Engineer who can design - You don’t need to be a front-end wizard (although we’d love if you are!), but you have a good eye for distinguishing good vs. bad UX. Don’t expect sloppiness in any area of the stack to be fixed by someone else. Engineer who can manage - Everyone now has access to an army of digital employees and the best programmers on earth. Can you effectively use them to multiply yourself and our team? Oh and did we mention, everyone at Tightknit is a community manager! 🙌

Requirements

At least 5+ years of experience as a full-time full-stack engineer
Strong backend engineering fundamentals
Experience designing production systems
Ability to learn quickly
Ability to talk to customers, synthesize their asks, and create excellent products with extreme level of thoughtfulness and detail
Ability to design systems with a good eye for distinguishing good vs. bad UX
Ability to effectively use digital employees and programmers to multiply yourself and the team
Ability to operate independently with high accountability
Ability to make at least one architectural decision that meaningfully improves our trajectory

Nice To Haves

Experience at an early-stage startup or working directly with founders is strongly preferred
Experience delivering enterprise products is a bonus
Front-end wizardry is a plus
Suggest something to us regarding tools

Responsibilities

Work directly with the CTO
Define architecture, not just implement it
Shape product direction, not just execute it
Own systems end-to-end (design → implementation → monitoring → iteration)
Interact directly with customers
Build internal AI workflows to accelerate our velocity
Help determine how engineering operates here
Wear many hats and operate independently with high accountability
Talk to customers, synthesize their asks, and create excellent products with extreme level of thoughtfulness and detail
Hold yourself and your work to a high bar
Design systems with a good eye for distinguishing good vs. bad UX
Effectively use digital employees and programmers to multiply yourself and the team
Complete your SuperDay
Join the Slack customer community and see how real users think
Form strong opinions about our architecture, product gaps, and velocity constraints
Release a small to medium-sized feature
Improve something meaningful
Ship production code
Own a scoped but consequential project end-to-end
Propose improvements to our systems (engineering, AI workflows, APIs, performance, etc.)
Start shaping how engineering should operate here — not just participating in it
Lead a cross-cutting initiative (integration, refactor, reliability improvement, new surface area)
Have direct customer conversations
Make at least one architectural decision that meaningfully improves our trajectory

Benefits

Competitive salary and equity
10-year exercise window for stock options
Unlimited PTO, and we will encourage you to take it
A minimum of 8 weeks of fully paid parental leave
Generous budget for equipment, software, and ergonomics
$100/month community membership and education budget, with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval
Membership to a co-working space if you are located in SF or NYC
Top-tier health insurance for you and your dependents (US)
High-quality supplemental health insurance for you and your dependents (outside US)
Tightknit covering 100% of the premiums for health insurance