Staff Software Engineer
Staff-level software engineer serving as the technical anchor for a high-scale, event-driven communications platform. The role owns architecture, experimentation, channel orchestration, and LLM-powered personalization while influencing cross-functional technical direction.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Own the architecture and technical direction of Headway’s high-scale communications platform.
- Design and evolve the decision engine, experimentation layer, channel orchestration, and unified message ledger.
- Build and operate high-throughput, event-driven systems across email, SMS, and other communication channels.
- Guide multi-vendor delivery-stack decisions and evaluate build-versus-buy trade-offs.
- Bring LLM-powered personalization systems from concept to reliable production operation.
- Partner with marketing, customer experience, product, and patient teams to drive cross-functional alignment.
- Translate technical trade-offs for non-technical stakeholders and shape direction across teams without direct authority.
- Raise the technical capabilities of the team through leadership, mentorship, and knowledge sharing.
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful Staff-level or equivalent experience.
- Experience designing and building high-volume, event-driven communications platforms handling millions of events per month.
- Fluency with multi-vendor delivery stacks and platform-layer build-versus-buy decisions.
- Experience with experimentation infrastructure, including A/B testing, engagement analytics, personalization, or recommendation systems.
- Exposure to LLM-powered systems in production, including reliability, latency, and quality considerations at scale.
- Strong systems thinking, communication, and technical leadership skills.
- Ability to work effectively with ambiguity and learn new technologies and systems.
Technologies
- Python 3, TypeScript
- FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, React, Remix, Next.js
- PostgreSQL, Redis
- AWS, Fargate, ECS, S3
- Spark, Kafka
- Datadog, PagerDuty, Sentry
- GitHub
- Snyk, Semgrep, Lacework
- Knock, Iterable, Twilio, Mailgun
Compensation
- Annual salary range: $265,000–$331,000.
Skills
Python, TypeScript, FastAPI, Sqlalchemy, React, Next.js, Postgres, Redis, AWS, Kafka, Spark, LLMs, A/B Testing, Datadog, Kubernetes
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