Product Engineer - Backend, Staff Software Engineer level

Job Description

Job Description

Salary - $130,000 - $150,000

What You'll Own

Own and evolve backend systems: scalability, reliability, performance, developer experience

Lead core data model work

Reduce tech debt and improve critical paths

Build tooling and services for content creation, project automation, validations, and documentation

Collaborate end-to-end with product and frontend

Collaborate with non-technical members of the team (support, growth)

Speak directly with NextWork learners in the community

Requirements

Must-Have

6-10 years of professional engineering experience (Staff Software Engineer level). Will consider 4-5 years if stellar with strong career progression.

First or early engineer at a startup with 0-to-1 ownership. Has built something from zero to one.

Consistent scope and title progression over time

Owned a core product domain (not just features) end-to-end

Proactively identifies product or system problems without being told

Clear, measurable impact in previous roles

Comfortable with ambiguity. Phrases like "defined the problem," "drove strategy," and "owned the roadmap" should be in their vocabulary.

Cross-functional collaborator who has shipped with product and design under real constraints

Pragmatic about tradeoffs: build vs. buy, boring tech, fast V1S

Recent experience on small or early-stage teams

Positive, practical adoption of AI in their workflow

Based in Austin or willing to relocate. 5 days a week, in-person at West 6th Street.

Nice-to-Have

RAG experience

SEO awareness

Graph-based data modeling

Prior work at consumer or prosumer companies with a high engineering bar (Linear, Canva, comparable)

Backend experience in Go, Node/TypeScript

Prior EdTech, creator economy, or community platform engineering experience