Staff Backend Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Staff Backend Engineer

Location: 3 days in-office in San Francisco, CA
Employment Type: Full-time
Experience: 8+ years
Focus: Backend Architecture, Marketplace Infrastructure, Microservices, EKS, AI-Native Engineering

About Our Client

Our client is a fast-growing consumer marketplace platform expanding into new collectibles categories. The company is scaling quickly and building the backend infrastructure needed to support high-volume transactions, new vertical launches, and a more modern, reliable engineering foundation.

This is an opportunity to join a high-ownership engineering team working on large-scale backend systems, marketplace infrastructure, and category expansion in a fast-moving consumer environment.

About the Role

Our client is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to help scale the backbone of their platform as they expand into new collectibles categories.

This person will be a highly opinionated technical architect who can own large projects end-to-end — from designing container-based systems to launching new product categories and migrating legacy systems into scalable microservices.

This is a strong fit for an engineer who can balance greenfield architecture with legacy modernization, enjoys working in a high-scale marketplace environment, and is comfortable using AI-powered development tools as part of their daily workflow.

What You'll Do

• Design and scale container-based backend architecture using EKS

• Help scale backend systems from roughly 1.5B to 2.5B+ monthly transactions

• Build backend systems for new category launches with unique inventory, marketplace, and scaling requirements

• Own major backend projects from architecture through implementation, deployment, and iteration

• Migrate monolithic repositories into microservices while keeping existing systems stable

• Improve production reliability through observability, monitoring, and scalability planning

• Work with tools like Datadog and Sentry to identify, troubleshoot, and improve system performance

• Partner closely with DevOps, product, and cross-functional teams to ship reliable marketplace infrastructure

• Use AI-powered engineering tools, including Claude Code and Cursor, as part of the development and PR workflow

• Balance speed, reliability, and long-term architecture in a fast-paced consumer marketplace environment

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience

• Strong experience designing and scaling backend systems in production

• Experience with container-based infrastructure, ideally EKS or Kubernetes-based environments

• Strong understanding of microservices architecture and monolith-to-microservices migrations

• Experience building systems that support high-volume transactions, marketplace workflows, or consumer-facing platforms

• Strong production reliability instincts, including observability, monitoring, and scalability planning

• Experience working with tools like Datadog, Sentry, or similar observability platforms

• Ability to own large technical projects end-to-end

• Strong architectural opinions with the ability to collaborate in a low-ego team environment

• Comfort using AI-powered development tools as part of the daily engineering workflow

• High ownership, strong communication, and a bias toward shipping

Why This Opportunity

• Join a fast-growing marketplace platform expanding into new collectibles categories

• Own backend architecture that supports billions of transactions each month

• Work on both greenfield systems and meaningful legacy modernization

• Help launch new verticals with unique inventory and scaling challenges

• Partner with a high-ownership, low-ego engineering team

• Use modern AI-powered engineering workflows to move faster and improve development quality

• Step into a Staff-level role with real technical influence across architecture, reliability, and platform scale

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a Staff-level backend engineer who has scaled production systems, owned complex architecture, and helped modernize backend platforms without breaking the business.

They are opinionated but collaborative, comfortable operating in ambiguity, and excited to build reliable systems for a fast-growing consumer marketplace.