Staff Software Engineer - Core Services

Taskrabbit•San Francisco, CA

3d•$150,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Core Services team builds shared capabilities and services used across Taskrabbit’s platform, providing a foundation that helps engineering teams move faster and deliver scalable features. The Staff Software Engineer will lead the design and evolution of shared platform capabilities, including authentication and identity, event-driven systems, and API infrastructure. The role’s technical decisions will influence engineering productivity, product velocity, and the marketplace experience. This position leads a team designing, building, evolving, and maintaining foundational systems. It combines hands-on development with architectural leadership, mentoring, and partnership with Engineering and Product leadership to establish a unified technical strategy for shared services. The role is hybrid and requires working in Taskrabbit’s San Francisco hub every Tuesday and Wednesday.

Requirements

8+ years of experience developing modern APIs and distributed services.
Hands-on experience with authentication and identity platforms such as Auth0, Okta, or Cognito, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SSO.
Experience designing and operating event-based architectures such as Kafka, SNS/SQS, or EventBridge.
Experience building and maintaining robust TypeScript-based APIs and services.
Exceptionally strong technical design and architecture skills focused on scalable shared capabilities.
Professional experience with AI-led agentic software development tools such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor.
Experience with modern software development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and containerized environments.
Passion for mentoring engineers and elevating team capabilities.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly explain complex technical subjects.
Proven track record of breaking complex platform initiatives into manageable, high-impact iterations.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, infrastructure as code, and container orchestration such as Kubernetes.
Comfort with relational and key-value datastores such as MySQL, Redis, and Elasticsearch.
Experience with Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) design patterns.
Experience with API gateways, rate limiting, and securing service-to-service communication.
Professional experience with Ruby on Rails, including working within and extending large existing Rails applications.

Responsibilities

Lead the architecture, integration, and adoption of shared platform capabilities across teams, including authentication and identity, event streaming, and API infrastructure.
Design, build, and maintain robust, high-performance TypeScript-based APIs and foundational services.
Drive the design and adoption of event-based architectures that enable reliable, loosely coupled communication between services.
Own and evolve authentication and authorization approaches, including integrations with third-party identity platforms and partners.
Work closely with Ruby on Rails backend services and integrate shared capabilities into existing application infrastructure.
Propose and drive improvements to platform performance, reliability, security, and developer experience.
Guide and mentor engineers on API design, system design, and scalable architecture best practices.
Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to define a unified technical strategy for shared services.