Staff Software Engineer

About this role

About the Role
We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to own architecture and design decisions for our platform, including the modernization of legacy enterprise systems into modern, cloud-capable solutions. You'll operate with significant autonomy, act as a force multiplier for the rest of the engineering team, work closely with our Head of R&D as a technical backup, and be a candidate for broader technical responsibility across projects as you prove yourself. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role on a lean, three-person engineering team — small enough that your architectural calls ship and show results in weeks, not after months of committee review. You'll be a player-coach: as comfortable writing code as setting direction, designing and deciding as well as implementing, delegating, and growing the engineers around you. In an AI-assisted development era, we value sound judgment and design thinking as much as implementation speed — you'll have real latitude to use tools like Claude and Cursor to move faster, not just permission to.
Responsibilities
Architecture & Technical Ownership

• Own architecture and design decisions for the systems you're responsible for, favoring pragmatic, right-sized solutions over unnecessary complexity, and weighing trade-offs (build vs. buy, hosted vs. on-premises, integration approach) with senior-level judgment.

• Lead the modernization of legacy systems into maintainable, cloud-capable architectures without disrupting the business relying on them.

• Review requirements and designs early to flag architectural risk, technical debt, and feasibility gaps before they become expensive.

• Own solution-level architecture documentation — decisions, trade-offs, and the reasoning behind them — so the system stays understandable at a glance, not just in your head.

Hands-On Delivery

• Design and implement significant parts of the system yourself — this role ships production code, not just plans.

• Own what you build end-to-end, including its health after it ships — if it breaks in production, you're part of fixing it.

• Apply AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor) to work faster across design, implementation, and documentation, with informed judgment about where they genuinely help.

Team Leadership & Mentorship

• Delegate work effectively and help pull the wider team forward, rather than carrying everything yourself.

• Mentor other engineers through code review, design discussion, and day-to-day guidance, as an individual contributor rather than a people manager.

• Act as a technical backup to the Head of R&D, and take on broader technical responsibility across projects over time.

Product & Customer Judgment

• Translate ambiguous customer needs — including regulated-industry and enterprise requirements — into sound technical designs.

• Work closely with product owners, QA, and subject-matter experts to understand how the product is used and where the real risk lies.

• Communicate trade-offs, risks, and plans clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Ways of Working

• Operate independently in ambiguous, shifting-priority conditions, setting your own priorities rather than waiting to be told what's next.

• This role has no fixed lane — architecture, hands-on coding, mentoring, production support, whatever's needed. You pick it up rather than waiting for it to be assigned.

• Participate in and help shape Agile ceremonies (stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives).

Our Stack

• Frontend: React (TypeScript) single-page applications.

• Backend: polyglot services, primarily .NET and Python, built as event-driven microservices.

• Databases: PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.

• Infrastructure: containerized, Kubernetes-based deployments with owned CI/CD pipelines.

• Deployment model: hybrid — both cloud-hosted (SaaS) and on-premises enterprise environments.

• API & identity: API gateway / service mesh patterns and OIDC-based identity providers.

• We're also maintaining and modernizing some longer-standing legacy systems — comfort reading and evolving older architectures is part of the job.

Requirements
What You'll Bring

Must-Have

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including real ownership of architecture and design decisions — not just executing someone else's plan.

• Proven track record modernizing legacy systems into maintainable, cloud-capable architectures.

• Full software development lifecycle experience: requirements through design, implementation, testing, release, and operations.

• Strong relational database fundamentals (e.g., PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or Oracle).

• Experience in regulated-industry and/or enterprise software environments, with a real appreciation for compliance, data integrity, and audit requirements.

• Solid grounding in secure coding practices and software design principles.

• A track record of mentoring or informally leading other engineers — pulling a team forward, not just excelling individually.

• Excellent written and verbal communication in English, with both technical and non-technical audiences.
Nice-to-Have

• Hands-on experience designing and owning CI/CD pipelines, not just using ones someone else built.

• Experience with hybrid deployment models — supporting both cloud-hosted/SaaS and on-premises enterprise environments.

• Experience across more than one of PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.

• Practical, regular use of AI-assisted development tools (Claude, Cursor, or similar) in your day-to-day engineering workflow.

• A habit of evaluating and adopting new tools and technologies early.

• Experience designing or shipping AI/ML-powered features in a production application (e.g., using LLMs, cloud AI/ML services, or applied ML) — we're actively exploring how AI capabilities fit into our platform.
You'll Thrive Here If

• You're comfortable operating with autonomy and ambiguity, reasoning from first principles when there's no existing…