Staff Backend Engineer, Architecture Engineering: Nonlinear Productivity

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Backend Engineer, Architecture Engineering: Nonlinear Productivity based in Canada. This is a senior technical leadership role focused on building new systems that fundamentally improve software development productivity. You’ll serve as a technical anchor for a greenfield team exploring agentic engineering solutions and new approaches to developer workflows. The role combines backend engineering, distributed systems expertise, AI/LLM-based system design, and product-oriented problem solving. You’ll take ambiguous challenges from initial discovery through architecture, implementation, measurement, and production deployment. Your work will influence how engineers review code, manage releases, and navigate friction throughout the software development lifecycle. You’ll operate across a broad codebase, mentor experienced engineers, shape technical direction, and collaborate with distributed teams and senior stakeholders. The environment emphasizes autonomy, experimentation, AI-assisted development, and the opportunity to establish technical foundations for an emerging product area.

Set the technical direction for agentic systems, including agent orchestration, tool usage, guardrails, recovery strategies, and decisions about where human involvement remains essential. Identify and prioritize sources of friction across the software development lifecycle and determine whether the most effective solution is technical, process-based, agentic, or a combination. Lead initiatives from early hypotheses and discovery through concrete technical proposals, implementation, production deployment, and measurement of results. Work across different areas of a large codebase as required by the problem, operating effectively as a generalist rather than within a narrowly defined service boundary. Apply distributed systems expertise to identify concurrency issues, scaling limitations, consistency challenges, deployment differences, and failure modes in AI-generated or agent-driven solutions. Establish evaluation approaches that distinguish plausible-looking results from solutions that are genuinely correct, reliable, and production-ready. Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, technical discussions, pairing, and practical guidance on agent engineering and distributed systems. Collaborate regularly with distributed engineering teams to align on roadmaps, tooling, architecture, and technical priorities. Communicate technical progress, decisions, and outcomes to senior stakeholders and partner teams. Help maintain a high technical bar during hiring and participate in technical leadership assessments for Staff-level engineering candidates. Build and evolve a greenfield technical foundation, expanding the scope and impact of the team as its systems and initiatives mature. Requirements: Significant professional software engineering experience, with the ability to operate at Staff level and provide technical leadership across complex initiatives. Demonstrated experience building reliable agentic or large language model (LLM)-based systems, including multi-step orchestration, tool use, guardrails, recovery mechanisms, or related production capabilities. Strong distributed systems and computer science fundamentals, including coordination, consistency, idempotency, rate limiting, failure handling, and behavior under load. Strong proficiency in at least one of Go, Rust, or Python, with the ability to read and modify code in the other languages. Proven ability to work autonomously within unfamiliar codebases and move initiatives from discovery through implementation and completion. Track record of delivering meaningful outcomes when requirements are ambiguous or incomplete, with the ability to break complex problems into practical, incremental, shippable steps. Experience designing evaluation frameworks for systems where apparent correctness and actual correctness can differ. Ability to raise engineering quality beyond individual contributions through technical leadership, design reviews, mentoring, and effective collaboration. Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience using technical documentation and cross-team discussions to align stakeholders. Ability to identify opportunities for collaboration, unblock other engineers, and influence technical decisions without relying solely on formal authority. Experience with AI-assisted engineering workflows and a willingness to incorporate modern AI tools into day-to-day development is valuable. Candidates are expected to be comfortable working remotely and collaborating across geographic locations and time zones. Benefits: Fully remote work opportunity for candidates based in Canada or the United States, subject to applicable location and hiring requirements. U.S. base salary range for the listed level of $152,800–$259,200 USD ; compensation varies based on experience, skills, education, location, and other relevant factors. The stated range applies to U.S. residents and does not include bonuses, equity, or benefits. Equity compensation and an employee stock purchase plan. Benefits designed to support employee health, financial security, and overall well-being. Flexible paid time off. Parental leave. Growth and development funding to support ongoing learning and professional development. Team Member Resource Groups and an inclusive, collaborative workplace culture. Remote-first flexibility designed to support distributed teams. Opportunities to work on emerging AI and developer productivity technologies with significant technical ownership. Exposure to complex distributed systems and large-scale software engineering challenges. Opportunities to influence the foundations of a new technical area and expand your scope as the team grows. Support for accessible and inclusive interview experiences, with reasonable adjustments available during the hiring process. Candidates from varied experience backgrounds are encouraged to apply, even if they do not meet every listed qualification.

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