Staff Engineer

OpenKrill; United States; Remote; USD 151,000 - 179,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote

Async-friendly culture

Flexible hours

Job summary

AnswersNow is seeking a Staff Engineer to own the architecture of our React frontend, Node/Express APIs, Postgres data layer, and AWS ECS infrastructure. You will drive the JavaScript-to-TypeScript migration, design scalable ETL and AI integration frameworks, and lead architectural reviews with product and clinical leadership.

You will mentor engineers across levels, establish engineering standards, and partner with stakeholders to balance velocity with sustainable reliability in a growth-stage

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a senior or staff-level role.
• Deep expertise in JavaScript and TypeScript in a production full-stack environment.
• Strong command of React, Node.js/Express, and Postgres — you can reason about performance, reliability, and maintainability at each layer.
• Proven experience designing and owning distributed systems or data pipeline architectures on AWS (ECS, RDS, S3, Lambda experience valued).
• Track record of technical mentorship — you've made engineers around you measurably better.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; you can write an architecture doc, run a design review, and brief a non-technical executive in the same day.
• Experience working in or leading engineering at a growth-stage startup — you understand the balance between velocity and sustainability.
• Familiarity with ETL pipelines, AI/LLM integration patterns, or data-intensive systems is a strong plus.
• Significant experience architecting and deploying production-grade ML/AI systems, including LLM integration and model lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the architecture of our core platform: React frontend, Node.js/Express APIs, Postgres, and AWS ECS infrastructure.
• Drive our JavaScript → TypeScript migration, establishing patterns, tooling, and standards the team can follow.
• Design and extend our ETL pipeline and config-driven AI integration framework, enabling engineers to ship AI-powered features faster and more reliably.
• Lead technical design reviews, create architecture decision records (ADRs), and ensure engineering decisions are documented and defensible.
• Identify and resolve systemic technical debt — not just flagging it, but owning the plan to address it.
• Define and execute the technical strategy for integrating ML/AI models into our core platform, ensuring scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Mentor engineers across all levels — pair, review, coach, and grow the team's collective capability.
• Establish and maintain engineering standards: code quality, testing practices, observability, on-call runbooks, and incident response.
• Serve as a technical resource and thought partner for product, clinical, and business stakeholders.
• Help define the engineering hiring bar and participate in the interview process.
• Partner with engineering leadership and product to scope, sequence, and de-risk large technical initiatives.
• Lead by example on production support — define runbooks, own post-mortems, and drive systemic fixes from incidents.
• Work across UI, API, DB, and infrastructure layers with genuine depth in at least two.

Skills

JavaScript

TypeScript

React

Node.js/Express

Postgres

AWS ECS

ETL pipelines

AI/LLM integration

ML/AI systems

Mentorship

Communication

Job description

Staff EngineerRemote, Anywhere in the US

About AnswersNowAt AnswersNow, we are trailblazing the future of autism therapy, making it more immediate, accessible, and effective for families everywhere. Our innovative virtual ABA therapy platform is thoughtfully designed by clinicians to recreate the focused, supportive environment of in-person therapy, complete with distraction-free features and interactive activities that enhance engagement and progress.

Our team operates fully remote—meaning you’ll have the flexibility to work from the comfort of home. If you're ready to make a meaningful impact and join a team that's reshaping autism therapy, we’d love to hear from you!

Why this role matters:

We're looking for a Staff Engineer who operates at the intersection of deep technical expertise and broad organizational impact. You don't just write great code — you elevate the entire engineering organization. You shape architecture decisions, define engineering standards, mentor engineers across all levels, and partner with product and clinical leadership to translate complex problems into scalable technical solutions.

At AnswersNow, this means owning the technical health of our platform — our React frontend, Node/Express APIs, Postgres data layer, AWS ECS infrastructure, and our growing ETL and AI pipeline ecosystem — while ensuring the team can move fast without accumulating crippling technical debt.

Job Details

• W2 Employee
• Full-Time
• 100% Remote

Job Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a senior or staff-level role
• Deep expertise in JavaScript and TypeScript in a production full-stack environment
• Strong command of React, Node.js/Express, and Postgres — you can reason about performance, reliability, and maintainability at each layer
• Proven experience designing and owning distributed systems or data pipeline architectures on AWS (ECS, RDS, S3, Lambda experience valued)
• Track record of technical mentorship — you've made engineers around you measurably better
• Excellent written and verbal communication; you can write an architecture doc, run a design review, and brief a non-technical executive in the same day
• Experience working in or leading engineering at a growth-stage startup — you understand the balance between velocity and sustainability
• Familiarity with ETL pipelines, AI/LLM integration patterns, or data-intensive systems is a strong plus
• Significant experience architecting and deploying production-grade ML/AI systems, including LLM integration and model lifecycle management.

Nice to have:

• Experience with healthcare or regulated data environments (HIPAA compliance, PHI handling)
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures, message queues, or streaming pipelines
• Prior experience as an engineering manager who returned to an IC track (player-coach background welcome)
• Contributions to open source or engineering blog posts / conference talks

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership

• Own and evolve the architecture of our core platform: React frontend, Node.js/Express APIs, Postgres, and AWS ECS infrastructure
• Drive our JavaScript → TypeScript migration, establishing patterns, tooling, and standards the team can follow
• Design and extend our ETL pipeline and config-driven AI integration framework, enabling engineers to ship AI-powered features faster and more reliably
• Lead technical design reviews, create architecture decision records (ADRs), and ensure engineering decisions are documented and defensible
• Identify and resolve systemic technical debt — not just flagging it, but owning the plan to address it
• Define and execute the technical strategy for integrating ML/AI models into our core platform, ensuring scalability, performance, and reliability.

Engineering Culture & Mentorship

• Mentor engineers across all levels — pair, review, coach, and grow the team's collective capability
• Establish and maintain engineering standards: code quality, testing practices, observability, on-call runbooks, and incident response
• Serve as a technical resource and thought partner for product, clinical, and business stakeholders
• Help define the engineering hiring bar and participate in the interview process

Delivery & Operations

• Partner with engineering leadership and product to scope, sequence, and de-risk large technical initiatives
• Lead by example on production support — define runbooks, own post-mortems, and drive systemic fixes from incidents
• Work across UI, API, DB, and infrastructure layers with genuine depth in at least two

What we Offer

• $151,000- $178,500 annual salary
• Fully remote – work from anywhere in the U.S.
• Flexible hours with an async-friendly team culture

More About AnswersNow

AnswersNow welcomes applicants of all backgrounds, experiences, and abilities. We believe a diverse team is a strong team, and are committed to provide a fair and equitable experience for every candidate. If you require reasonable accommodations at any stage, we encourage you to reach out. We’re here to support!

Learn more about us at getanswersnow.com http://getanswersnow.com.

E-Verify & Right to Work

AnswersNow participates in E-Verify and electronically verifies the work authorization of all new hires upon employment. E-Verify is only used after a job offer has been accepted; it is not used to pre-screen applicants.

For more information, view the E-Verify Participation https://static-assets.ripplingcdn.com/webapp-static/apps/everify/us_poster_participation.pdf and Right to Work https://static-assets.ripplingcdn.com/webapp-static/apps/everify/us_poster_righttowork.pdf posters in English and Spanish.