Staff Software Engineer - Boston

Staff Software Engineer

Perk is growing its engineering footprint in North America, and we're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help us do it right. You'll play a central role in a new product launch as Perk continues its expansion - a rare chance to shape something from the ground up.

How We Work:

At Perk, we believe the best work happens when great people come together in small teams with a shared sense of purpose. Each team has real ownership of its domain, a genuine say in what gets built, and the autonomy to make it happen. We care about impact, and we trust our people to deliver it.

What It Means To Be A Staff Engineer At Perk:

• Own the technical vision across teams.

• You'll work across multiple teams to coordinate a shared technical direction. This means contributing to the creation of annual and quarterly plans in collaboration with product managers, engineering managers, and other engineers — and translating that into clear, actionable priorities that teams can work to today.

• Be hands-on, with purpose.

• Staff engineers at Perk are mostly hands-on — spending the majority of their time actively contributing within one or two teams, and the rest mentoring engineers, unblocking delivery, and working with dependent teams to move shared projects forward. You won't be pulled into excessive meetings or committees with a focus on impactful collaboration.

• Shape how we work, not just what we build.

• You'll take higher-level business goals and turn them into engineering approaches. That means proposing the shape of annual objectives, identifying architectural changes needed for scale, and making sure the team is investing its energy where it counts most — not just staying busy.

• Raise the bar for everyone around you.

• Staff engineers are mentors and multipliers. You'll support engineers through direct mentorship, design reviews, and pairing. You'll help explain technical complexity to the wider business — including why certain things take the time they do — and help the whole team level up their skills to better apply them to the domain.

• Lead across boundaries.

• Your influence won't stop at your own team. You'll coordinate across squads, contribute to engineering initiatives, and drive alignment across the broader organisation. When there are dependencies or blockers, you'll be the one connecting the dots.

Desired Skills And Experience:

• Product engineering mindset: you work end to end — from understanding customer problems alongside product, through to deployment and measuring impact. Technical skill alone isn't enough; you need to be able to own a problem fully.

• Cross-team technical leadership: proven experience coordinating significant, multi-team technical initiatives where you've had to manage dependencies, align stakeholders, and keep a longer-horizon project moving.

• Architectural judgment: ability to design scalable, evolvable systems and articulate a clear technical roadmap — balancing long-term thinking with pragmatic, near-term delivery.

• "You build it, you run it" experience: you've run your own services — monitoring, testing, rolling out, and operating them in production. The tools may differ; the mindset shouldn't.

• Domain complexity: experience working in a domain with significant underlying complexity — ideally flights or travel, but also fintech or any industry where you've had to build reliable, customer-facing products on top of messy, constrained underlying systems.

• Both frontend and backend, full-stack comfortable: our stack is roughly 50% backend, 50% frontend. You should be comfortable across both, with the depth in backend systems. We use Python and AWS; we're open to people who've used different tools, as long as they can demonstrate they learn quickly.

• Operational maturity: experience leading observability and reliability practices; defining SLOs, handling incidents, and conducting blameless post-mortems.

• Mentorship and influence: a track record of levelling up engineers around you through mentorship, design reviews, and by modelling what great engineering looks like.

• AI-driven development: experience with — or a strong interest in — modern AI-augmented workflows, including agentic coding and AI-assisted code review.

What We Offer:

• Receive competitive compensation and equity ownership in Perk

• Rest and recharge with our generous allocation of 20 vacation days and 12 public holidays

• Enjoy the flexibility of three medical plans to choose from, with company contributions and an HSA when enrolling in an HDHP medical plan

• Take control of your physical health with additional comprehensive benefit plans, covering dental, vision and Wellhub's gym subscription from your start date

• Rest assured that you're covered by life and disability policies from your start date, with options to add extra protection through voluntary buy-up plans

• Plan for your future with our 401(k) plan with company matching contributions

• Care for your furry friends through partner discounts on pet insurance

• Join our unforgettable Perk events, including our spectacular annual summer party

• Always feel supported with Spring Health, our market-leading wellbeing partner, providing fast, comprehensive access to 12x therapy and 12x coaching sessions for you and your loved ones

• Focus on your family with 12-16 weeks' paid parental leave

• Contribute to your community with 16 paid hours per year to spend volunteering for your dearest charitable causes

• Broaden your horizons with up to 20 "Work from Anywhere" days per year

• Follow your passions and take a four-week, fully paid sabbatical once you reach 5 years

• Let us help you move to one of our hubs with relocation support

Compensation: Compensation for this role is a combination of salary and stock options. The anticipated base salary range is $174,000 - $215,000 per year. Actual compensation may vary based on specific qualifications, experience, and other job-related factors.

AI At Perk:

• AI is embedded in how we work and what we build. It spans the whole workflow: our Notion, Jira, GitHub and Slack are AI-connected so you get up to speed fast, and day-to-day it helps with specifying features, writing and reviewing code, and automated AI PR review on every pull request. When something goes wrong in production, AI surfaces context across systems quickly. We also embrace agentic coding, using AI as an active collaborator, not just a prompt-by-prompt co-pilot.

• We expect candidates to use AI tools in our coding interviews. The bar is understanding your code and owning what you produce. That reflects how we work every day.

AI is embedded in how we work across every function. The tools you'll use day-to-day are AI-enabled so you can move faster and spend more time on the work that matters. In practice, that means using AI to research and prioritise accounts, draft and refine outreach, handle customer interactions more effectively, synthesise information, and cut through shadow work - the invisible tasks that pull people away from the work only they can do - so you can focus on relationships and outcomes.

How We Work

At Perk, we take an IRL-first approach to work, where our team works together in-person 3 days a week. As such, this role requires you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We fundamentally believe in the value of meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity and ultimately making us a great place to work.

For certain roles, we can help with relocation from anywhere in the world, English is the official language at the office. Please submit your resume in English if you choose to apply. Do not forget to submit an updated portfolio and/or resume.

Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We're an equal