Staff Software Engineer, Backend

ABOUT POSH We are all social creatures, but the dominant “social” companies today have evolved into digital loneliness machines, driving isolation, anxiety, and mental health challenges around the world. Human connection is lost. Posh is a beacon guiding us back. Posh enables anyone to build an IRL community based on shared interests, while connecting consumers with the communities of people just like them. Founded by event organizers who were frustrated with the growing loneliness epidemic and the tools available to build their own event brand, we’ve built the ultimate platform for launching, monetizing, and finding IRL communities of people just like you. In just 6 years, Posh has grown to a team of 70, expanded to 8M+ users, secured $70m in venture funding, and facilitated over $350M in transactions. ABOUT THE ROLE At Posh, you'll set the technical direction for our backend systems. As Staff Backend Engineer, you own architecture across multiple services, drive platform improvements, and ship production code yourself. Staff at Posh means breadth and depth. You'll make architectural calls that affect multiple teams, not only your own squad. You'll raise the bar through design reviews, code review, mentorship, and technical leadership across functions. And you stay close to the work — implementation matters as much as architecture at this level. This is an in-person role at our New York City office in SoHo. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: - Own backend architecture across multiple services and team boundaries, from design through implementation. - Write production code daily and set the standard on quality, reliability, and engineering practice. - Partner with engineering leads and product managers to scope large initiatives and define what "done" actually means. - Improve scalability, performance, and reliability as the platform grows. - Identify and clear technical debt across teams, not only within your immediate scope. - Build security and observability into systems from day one rather than bolting them on later. - Build with data in mind: instrumentation, pipelines, and tooling that surface meaningful insight for organizers and the business. - Mentor engineers across levels and shape technical culture through reviews, design discussions, and direct coaching. - Help us hire well — participate in technical interviews and calibration. IDEAL CANDIDATE: - 8+ years of backend engineering experience, including time as a Staff, Principal, or technical lead. - Has designed and delivered systems that span multiple services or teams with clear ownership of the outcome. - Deep expertise in backend systems: APIs, data modeling, distributed systems, event-driven architecture. Strong working knowledge of the full stack. - Proficient in technologies relevant to our stack (e.g.,Java, Node.js, PostgreSQL, MongoDB AWS or similar cloud providers). - Has scaled platforms operationally, not just designed them on paper. You've watched performance regress under load, run incidents, and evolved architecture that was already in production. - Pragmatic about technology choices. You pick the right tool for the problem and can defend the tradeoff. - Communicates technical tradeoffs clearly to engineers, product, and business leaders. - Mentors and raises the engineering bar for the people around them. - Experience at a consumer, social, or marketplace company is a plus — those are the users we build for. When applying, please include links to your GitHub profile or a portfolio of past projects. Posh provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruit