Staff Software Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in New York.

📋 Description

• Recognize systemic engineering challenges across our platforms and facilitate their resolution — influencing the technical backlog and immediate architecture.

• Suggest and validate technical solutions for issues related to scale, performance, security, or inter-team dependencies.

• Drive architectural decisions for complex, ambiguous, or high-risk projects.

• Integrate modern industry patterns — including AI/ML tools — into our technical strategy where they significantly impact outcomes.

• Write code, review pull requests, debug production issues, and optimize system performance — this role involves more than just theoretical discussions.

• Investigate our AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes workloads, and JVM-based services to uncover and resolve actual problems.

• Engage in our on-call rotation as a secondary escalation point for intricate engineering incidents.

• Assist during major incidents to aid teams in triaging, coordinating, and resolving issues — and conduct follow-up post-incident reviews that drive lasting solutions.

• Promote operational excellence across our engineering teams: observability, reliability, deployment practices, and the operational habits that maintain system health at scale.

• Collaborate with engineering teams as a technical point of contact on complex projects — ensuring sound architectural decisions are documented and do not need to be revisited.

• Work directly with Engineering Managers to align technical efforts with team and product priorities.

• Mentor engineers within our teams, elevating the technical standards through reviews, pairing, and direct feedback.

• Stay attuned to customer needs. Comprehend how Sailthru's platform impacts its users, incorporate that context into technical decisions, and advocate against engineering choices that create customer friction.

• Work closely with the product team — contribute to defining what gets built, not just how it’s built. The best technical decisions arise when engineering and product collaborate from the outset.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive, proven expertise in AWS and cloud-native architecture — adept at building reliable, scalable systems that handle real traffic volumes.

• Strong foundational knowledge of JVM languages, primarily Java and Kotlin, with the flexibility to work across languages as required by the problem at hand.

• Practical experience with Kubernetes — deploying, managing, and troubleshooting workloads in a production environment.

• Background in designing and managing distributed systems — including fault tolerance, consistency trade-offs, service coordination, and failure modes at scale.

• Comfort working with large-scale databases — including query optimization, schema design, operational considerations, and trade-offs between data storage methodologies.

• Hands-on experience with AI/ML engineering — whether it involves integrating LLM capabilities, constructing pipelines, or assessing where AI genuinely adds value versus complicating processes.

• A proven history of successfully executing large, complex projects in ambiguous settings — scoping, driving consensus, and delivering results.

• Strong debugging instincts with a preference for root-cause analysis over temporary fixes.

• The insight to discern when to advocate for the ideal solution and when to opt for a more pragmatic approach.

• Proficiency with AI-driven development tools — such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, or similar — is essential. We use these tools daily and expect staff engineers to utilize them effectively and model best practices around prompt discipline, output validation, and security.

• Ability to operate without a predefined playbook — you have tackled novel challenges before and know how to navigate uncertainty.

• Comfort working with legacy codebases — capable of reading unfamiliar code, understanding older systems, and making significant improvements without necessitating a complete rewrite.

• The ability to swiftly analyze an existing architecture — identifying bottlenecks, constraints, and opportunities — and converting that understanding into specific, actionable proposals that enhance team velocity.

• You think expansively. You’re not limited by current practices — you can envision substantially better outcomes and work backwards to create a plan.

• Proactive approach. You prefer to act with imperfect information and adjust as necessary rather than waiting for certainty that may never arrive. You recognize the difference between reversible decisions and those that require more deliberation.

🏝️ Benefits

• Unlimited PTO

• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage

• Employee Equity and Stock Purchase Plan

• Employee Discounts, Virtual Wellness Classes, and Pet Insurance

• And more!!