Staff Software Engineer – Back-End

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in South Africa, +4 more countries.

📋 Description

• Deliver features from conception to deployment, handling the entire process from technical proposal to production.

• Develop capabilities for connected-system registration and governance.

• Create functionalities for credential ownership and sharing.

• Build high-performance workers that reliably execute workflows at scale.

• Define the architectural vision for OpenFn’s backend, including module boundaries, service interfaces, naming conventions, and best practices.

• Implement consistent patterns that assist engineers in navigating and extending the codebase, particularly when utilizing AI development tools.

• Establish engineering standards through code reviews, documentation, and personal contributions.

• Convert security findings into architectural modifications and ensure their implementation in production.

• Enhance trust boundaries, isolation, and credential management.

• Engage in design discussions, code reviews, and the drafting of proposals.

• Significantly influence the backend architectural direction as an individual contributor, without taking on people-management responsibilities.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 8 years of experience in building and operating backend services for customer-facing products.

• Proficient in designing backend service architectures, not only extending existing ones.

• Experience in building backend services using Node.js.

• Familiarity with operating services where reliability and scalability directly impact user experience.

• Ability to work independently and collaboratively across time zones within a small, distributed team, utilizing GitHub, Slack, and written proposals.

• Excellent professional communication skills in English and the ability to work effectively across diverse cultures.

• Knowledge of Elixir/Phoenix or other languages and frameworks tailored for functional programming or concurrency.

• Experience with developer tooling or extensive migration projects.

• Expertise in securing production systems.

• Background in health, humanitarian response, government digital transformation, or the broader social impact sector.

• Proficient in Spanish or French.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation based on experience, adhering to OpenFn’s Equal Pay for Equal Work policy.

• Flexible working hours.

• Fully remote work environment, with opportunities for team meetups in Europe and Africa.

• Significant impact on the platform’s architecture and the chance to help shape our technical strategy.

• Opportunity to develop open-source software that ensures global access to quality digital public services.