Staff Software Engineer (Platform Infrastructure)

• Own the architecture and roadmap for Zūm’s product platform, and build it - our product engineering team uses TypeScript/Node.js, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, Redis, Kafka, and gRPC
• Stay hands-on with the product: build and review features, so foundational layers stay grounded in how they’re actually used
• Work with product teams to decide what stays in the monolith and what becomes its own service, and make that extraction process routine and low-risk when it happens
• Make security and compliance part of the platform by design: build shared primitives for authentication and access rules to sensitive data, so product teams build on secure, policy-aligned foundations
• Watch how the platform behaves under real production load and evolve it ahead of need: spot emerging bottlenecks (event-loop stalls, slow queries, locking, index design, partition skew, consumer lag, RPC latency, retry storms, etc.), trace them to the architectural cause, and turn recurring problems into platform improvements
• Build the rules, automated checks, and tooling improvements that steer AI coding agents toward writing code that already fits platform patterns and conventions
• Jump in on live platform issues, lead incident and correction-of-error reviews, and own the systemic fixes that follow
• Act as the escalation point and thought partner for engineering leadership on platform investment and tradeoffs

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision benefits, including paid membership to One Medical
• Unlimited vacation policy
• Free daily catered lunches + fully stocked kitchen at HQ
• Ability to have a huge impact at an early-stage, mission-driven startup
• Fun office culture and a team you would be proud to work with

• When someone asks for “the best” solution, you map out the tradeoffs, present real options, and commit to a recommendation
• You care as much about how software gets built as what it does, and you measure a platform by the features it enables
• You lead through execution and influence through adoption of the platforms you build
• You want to build scalable infrastructure and technologies that enable Zūm products to grow and adapt at the pace today’s AI makes possible
• Products created on your platform are easy to maintain and a joy to build on
• You start simple, add complexity only when the data proves you need it, and lean on experience when measuring isn’t worth the cost
• Good sense of humor with a great ability to work with others
• Comfort operating with a high degree of ownership and autonomy in a fast-moving startup environment
• Track record of extracting services from a monolith deliberately and safely, with clear judgment about what should and shouldn’t be split out
• Deep expertise in Node.js/TypeScript (or a comparable backend language) and strong command of relational database design, including schema modeling, indexing, and query performance
• Comfort diagnosing performance issues at the architectural level: query plans, locking, partitioning, consumer lag, RPC latency, and similar failure modes
• Excellent communication skills, comfortable holding a technical line respectfully in design reviews
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of industry experience as a Software Engineer, with significant time spent building platforms, shared services, or core backend systems that other engineering teams build on
• Hands-on experience with the building blocks of a modern service-oriented backend: Kubernetes, Kafka or equivalent messaging systems, gRPC or similar RPC frameworks, Redis, and search/indexing systems like OpenSearch
• Experience designing and building authentication/authorization systems, including SSO protocols (SAML, OIDC) and authorization models (RBAC/ABAC)
• Proven ability to set technical direction and drive adoption through good defaults, not mandate
• Experience working in transportation, logistics, or another operationally complex industry
• Experience building platforms in a regulated or compliance-sensitive space (e.g., education, healthcare, fintech) where access control and data handling are first-class concerns
• Experience embedding engineering standards into AI coding agents or developer tooling (linting/agent rules, code generation harnesses, automated review checks)
• Passionate about working for a mission-driven company