Staff Software Engineer, Backend

What You’ll Do

Design and build scalable, reliable, and resilient distributed services using Python and FastAPI

Operate as an owner and technical leader within your team's domain and proactively assess and improve system performance and reliability

Drive engineering excellence through best practices in testing, monitoring, observability, and performance optimization

Define and own technical roadmaps, breaking down ambiguous and complex problem spaces into clear project plans and deliverables

Mentor and collaborate with engineers across levels, raising the technical bar and fostering growth across the team

Lead cross-functional technical efforts — working closely with product managers, designers, and engineers from adjacent teams to ensure alignment and technical integrity across boundaries

Participate in on-call rotations to ensure reliability of production systems

What You’ll Bring to the Team

7 - 10+ years of software engineering experience, including experience in roles involving technical leadership

Experience architecting, designing and building scalable web applications and distributed systems

Proficiency with Python, relational databases, and frameworks like FastAPI or Django, with hands-on experience in metrics instrumentation and data-driven performance tuning leveraging Ro’s load testing infrastructure and tools like Datadog

Proven track record of scaling complex, data-intensive backend systems through rapid growth (ideally in a mid-to-late stage startup environment), ensuring high performance and availability

Deep understanding of distributed systems-data consistency, communication patterns, and service boundaries-backed by hands-on experience building and maintaining data-intensive production systems

Strong sense of ownership, with the ability to understand and break down complex problem spaces into technical roadmaps

Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, foster collaboration, and set technical direction

Bonus Skills

Experience in telehealth or other highly regulated industries

Experience with decoupling monolithic applications into distributed asynchronous services

We’ve Got You Covered

Full medical, dental, and vision insurance + OneMedical membership

Healthcare and Dependent Care FSA

401(k) with company match

Flexible PTO

Wellbeing + Learning & Growth reimbursements

Paid parental leave + Fertility benefits

Pet insurance

Student loan refinancing

Virtual resources for mindfulness, counseling, and fitness