Staff Backend Engineer

Who is Recruiting from Scratch :

Recruiting from Scratch is a talent firm that focuses on placing the best candidate for our clients. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across North America, South America, and Europe to help them hire.

https : / / www.recruitingfromscratch.com /

Title of Role : Staff Backend Engineer

Location : Hybrid – Palo Alto, CA

Company Stage of Funding : Public Company

Office Type : Hybrid (3+ days / week onsite)

Salary : $200,000 - $240,000 base + bonus + equity

Work Type : Full-time

Visa Sponsorship : Available

Company Description

We are a leading recruiting agency representing a public, mission-driven social technology company focused on building meaningful experiences for millions of users worldwide. With over 13 million monthly active users and a track record of strong financial performance, this company is shaping the future of online community engagement, with a deep commitment to impact, innovation, and inclusivity.

As part of their next phase of growth, the engineering team is expanding rapidly. They are seeking passionate, experienced backend engineers who are excited about solving challenging technical problems, scaling distributed systems, and driving impact at global scale. The company combines the spirit of a high-growth startup with the stability of a public organization.

What You Will Do

As a Staff Backend Engineer , you will be a technical leader working on critical parts of a microservice-based platform that serves millions of users. You’ll work closely with product managers, designers, and fellow engineers to create scalable, performant, and highly available services.

Key responsibilities include :

Lead large-scale engineering projects and collaborate with product and design teams to deliver new features and capabilities.

Design and develop backend systems and APIs with a focus on stability, scalability, and performance.

Work across the stack to optimize key platform components using technologies such as Redis, Postgres, Kafka , and AWS .

Guide technical architecture and decision-making through data-driven experimentation and innovation.

Play a hands-on role in system reliability, incident response, and cost optimization of distributed backend services.

Mentor and support other engineers , conducting code reviews, architecture discussions, and knowledge sharing.

Collaborate on evolving and strengthening engineering best practices in testing, infrastructure, and monitoring.

Ideal Candidate Background

6+ years of backend engineering experience , building high-scale production systems.

Strong background in designing microservice architectures , managing data consistency and high availability across distributed systems.

Deep experience working with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and cloud-native technologies.

Fluency in JVM-based languages , particularly Kotlin , Java , or Scala .

Solid understanding of concurrency , threading models, and their performance trade-offs.

Demonstrated ability to write robust, well-tested code and solve complex technical challenges with minimal supervision.

Passionate about mentoring and elevating teammates through technical guidance and peer review.

Preferred

Production-level experience with Kotlin and Kafka in high-traffic environments.

Prior experience mentoring junior or mid-level engineers in a structured team environment.

Familiarity with DevOps practices, observability tooling, and infrastructure-as-code workflows.

Additional Benefits Include :

Premium medical, dental, and vision insurance (with dependent coverage options)

401(k) with 6% employer match , immediate vesting

Industry-leading gender-affirming and queer-inclusive health benefits

Monthly wellness, food, internet, and commuting stipends

Flexible PTO, onsite meals, and an annual travel & leisure stipend

https : / / www.recruitingfromscratch.com /

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