Staff Software Engineer I (Pod Architecture Team)

Compensation: $8,200–$9,700 USD per month (B2B)

Benefits

• 100% remote work
• Paid holidays and flexible, take-it-as-you-need-it scheduled time off
• Culture focused on innovation and big ideas
• MacBook provided from day one, plus a $500 stipend to design an ideal workspace
• Central European Time (CET) working hours to support a balanced schedule
• Equity in a rapidly growing startup

Role Overview

As a Staff Software Engineer I on the Pod Architecture Team, you will help evolve the core application architecture to support continued growth. You will transform a large Ruby monolith toward a more scalable and resilient architecture by evaluating and applying approaches such as service extraction, sharding, and pod- or cell-based architecture.

You will investigate product domains to understand technical complexities, dependencies, and business context. Partnering with engineering teams, you will identify appropriate architectural patterns, guide technical decisions, and support implementation. Beyond writing code, you will act as a technical advisor, helping teams navigate architectural tradeoffs and establish scalable solutions.

You will work collaboratively to solve complex architectural problems, navigate ambiguity and changing priorities, and influence technical direction across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable software solutions supporting the evolution of the core application architecture
• Evaluate service extraction, sharding, and pod- or cell-based architecture against product and platform needs
• Partner with engineering teams to understand product domains, system dependencies, technical constraints, and business requirements
• Guide architectural decisions and evaluate tradeoffs involving scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability
• Develop technical patterns, prototypes, and implementation approaches for architectural transformation
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and cross-functional partners to align architecture with product and business objectives
• Review code and technical designs and provide actionable guidance to improve engineering quality and consistency
• Troubleshoot complex system issues and identify root causes across interconnected applications and services
• Document architectural decisions, patterns, dependencies, and technical guidance for adoption across engineering teams
• Mentor engineers and share architectural expertise across the organization

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with programming languages and frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python, or JavaScript
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Experience developing and maintaining large, complex production applications
• Experience working with large monolithic applications and contributing to architectural transformations through service extraction, sharding, or pod- or cell-based architecture
• Strong Ruby or Ruby on Rails experience in complex production environments is highly preferred
• Strong understanding of software architecture, system design, scalability, reliability, and performance principles
• Strong understanding of designing, building, and consuming REST APIs
• Experience with performance tuning, memory optimization, caching mechanisms, and CDNs
• Strong proficiency with version control and CI/CD practices
• Proven experience using AI tools and automation strategically to improve team efficiency or output quality

What Will Help You Succeed

• Ability to independently form informed technical perspectives on complex, ambiguous systems
• Ability to influence architectural decisions and technical direction across teams without direct authority
• Systems thinking and curiosity about interactions among product domains, services, and platform components
• Proactive approach to researching and evaluating current and emerging technologies
• Comfort with ambiguity, changing priorities, and complex technical tradeoffs
• Breadth of cross-functional interests or depth of specialized mastery
• Resilience and ability to learn from scratch and thrive in ambiguity

How We Work

Ruby is the primary technology stack. You will need to learn Ruby to be effective in this role. Onboarding support may include mentoring from experienced engineers or access to a paid online course completed during working hours; the support approach will be tailored to your prior Ruby experience and selection-process insights.