About the Role
The Staff Software Engineer is a technical leader who operates across multiple projects and teams. You define architecture and engineering standards for a broader area of the product, driving technical excellence at scale. Working across backend, web, Android device platforms, companion apps, and embedded Linux as well as Java with Spring Boot, TypeScript (Vue/React), Python, AWS/Azure, microservices, event-driven systems, and serverless architectures you ensure our systems are scalable, reliable, and well-designed. You combine deep technical expertise with the ability to influence and align multiple teams toward shared technical goals.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and drive microservices architecture across multiple products and teams
- Establish engineering standards, patterns, and best practices adopted across the organization
- Define Spring Boot service patterns, standards, and shared libraries used across teams
- Lead technical design for complex, cross-team initiatives spanning Java, TypeScript, and Python services
- Own CI/CD strategy and DevOps practices for your area, improving deployment velocity and reliability
- Design and implement event-driven systems at scale using SNS/SQS, EventBridge, and Kafka
- Architect serverless solutions using Lambda, Step Functions, and associated AWS/Azure services
- Drive cloud infrastructure decisions across ECS, DynamoDB, RDS, S3, CloudFront, and related services
- Mentor Senior engineers and contribute to the growth of the broader engineering team
- Collaborate with Engineering Managers and Product leadership on technical roadmap and prioritization
- Lead technical design reviews and ensure architectural consistency across teams
- Identify strategic technical investments and drive adoption of new technologies
- Contribute to hiring processes including interview design and competency bar definition
- Drive reliability, observability, and performance improvements across services
- Resolve complex cross-service technical challenges and production incidents
Required Qualifications
- Extensive professional experience with demonstrated progression through engineering levels
- Expert-level proficiency in Java with deep experience in Spring Boot microservices architecture, and TypeScript (Vue/React) for full-stack development
- Proven experience defining microservices architecture across multiple products
- Proven ability to define architecture spanning multiple delivery surfaces backend, web, Android device platforms, companion apps, and/or embedded Linux making informed decisions about where application logic lives and how platforms communicate
- Deep AWS or Azure expertise including ECS, Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB, RDS, S3, and CloudFront
- Experience designing and operating event-driven systems at scale
- CI/CD strategy ownership and DevOps best practices across multiple teams
- Experience with Python for automation, data processing, or AI/ML integration
- Track record leading technical design across teams and driving consensus on architecture
- Strong background in system design, scalability, and reliability engineering
- Recommends architecture approaches involving data storage understands scalability, consistency models, partitioning, replication, operational concerns, and organization-wide data patterns across SQL and NoSQL systems
- Proven mentorship of engineers at multiple levels
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence without authority
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with AI/LLM integration including RAG, multi-agent workflows, or computer vision
- Public safety or mission-critical domain experience
- Multi-tenant SaaS architecture design and implementation
- Infrastructure as code expertise (Terraform, CDK)
- Performance engineering at scale across distributed systems
- Security architecture and threat modeling experience
- Experience defining hiring standards and competency bars for engineering teams
- Contributions to engineering blog posts, conference talks, or open-source projects
- Experience with Android platform development for specialized devices custom builds, device policies, background service architecture, BLE/hardware integration, and OTA delivery for field-deployed Android hardware.
- Experience evaluating cross-platform approaches (React Native) for companion app development and making build-vs-maintain decisions for low-volume, high-importance mobile apps.
- Embedded Linux application architecture service frameworks, deployment pipelines, and managing platform evolution (e.g., Ubuntu to Yocto migration paths).
Key Competencies
- Technical Leadership: Drives architecture decisions across multiple teams and products, establishing patterns that scale
- Systems Thinking: Understands complex interactions across Spring Boot microservices, event-driven systems, and cloud infrastructure to make well-reasoned trade-offs
- Engineering Judgment: Makes sound technical decisions under uncertainty, balancing short-term delivery with long-term sustainability
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Partners effectively with product, design, and engineering leadership to align technical strategy with business goals
- Mentorship and Team Development: Elevates the skills and judgment of Senior engineers and contributes to team growth
- Communication: Articulates complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences, from engineers to executives
- Ownership: Takes responsibility for technical outcomes across a broad area, proactively identifying and addressing risks
