Staff Backend Software Engineer

About the role

You own the technical direction and implementation of critical product areas within Feathr's nonprofit marketing platform. You identify challenging technical problems in your domains and shape the solutions the team commits to, building the hardest parts yourself. As a Staff Engineer, you provide expert technical judgment that guides product decisions across the full stack from Python backend services to React and TypeScript interfaces. You act as the go-to person when engineers encounter problems that have no established answer, advising on feasibility, cost, and risk during discovery. You own the work you ship end to end, monitoring outcomes after launch and handling debugging and fixes for about 30 days. This role is an individual contributor position where your primary impact comes from the work you scope and build yourself.

Key facts

What you'll do

Define the technical scope for the bets in your product areas, including options considered, the chosen approach, and associated tradeoffs.

Build the most challenging pieces of software in your product areas, including working backend services and integrated frontend components.

Create prototypes that retire feasibility risk before the team invests in production code.

Establish and maintain the quality standards for your areas, including code review practices and testing strategy.

Write technical scopes and decisions that are easy for other engineers to understand and reuse.

Develop and improve CI/CD pipelines, embedding security considerations into the solutions you design.

Plan upgrade and migration strategies for the systems you own, ensuring continuity and reliability.

Mentor engineers and help them advance to larger roles by providing guidance on technical and career growth.

Serve as the primary owner for deployed systems, monitoring outcomes and debugging issues for about 30 days after launch.

Advise on architecture, long-term technology choices, and standards shared across pods.

Contribute to hiring decisions by evaluating candidates and helping shape the engineering team.

Lead the discovery process for new bets, translating needs into technical work items that match the scope and risk profile.

Ensure your solutions hold up over time, with low rework and high stability in production.

Drive clarity and visibility by documenting processes and decisions where the team can easily find them.

Requirements

You bring 8+ years of experience building software that runs in production at scale.

You demonstrate expert skill in backend development, with deep knowledge of the systems you build.

You have hands-on experience with our stack or a similar stack, including Python and Flask-style APIs, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and Redis.

You have scoped and shipped distributed systems that use queues, caches, and search to meet real-world demands.

You have run software on AWS and Kubernetes in production environments, managing complexity and risk.

You have successfully scoped solutions that other engineers have built to completion without rework.

You have mentored engineers and helped them grow into larger roles and more complex projects.

You write clearly, producing technical scopes and decisions that are straightforward and easy to follow.

You have built and maintained CI/CD pipelines, considering security and reliability in every solution you design.

Nice to have

Experience working with nonprofits or mission-driven organizations that rely on data to drive decisions.

Familiarity with the specific needs of marketing, advertising, and analytics platforms in the nonprofit sector.

Practical notes

This role is fully remote within the USA.

You are expected to work full-time hours and engage in the standard company holiday schedule, including Winter Break.

Paid vacation and sick time are provided in accordance with company policy.

Travel is not required for this position.

No specific visa sponsorship details are provided in this listing.

The compensation range and benefits are outlined in the key facts section of this posting.