Staff Software Developer (copy)

BackerKit; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 184,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

Stock options

Medical, dental, vision

401k match

Learning stipend

Job summary

BackerKit is seeking a Staff-level engineer to own frontend craftsmanship within our Ruby on Rails monolith. You will influence engineering, product, and design decisions, mentoring peers and shaping patterns across the team.

This remote-first role emphasizes user-centric UI, fast iteration, and collaboration with a small, focused crew working around Pacific hours. You’ll work directly in Rails views to simplify workflows, with opportunities to mentor, lead frontend architecture, and improve

Qualifications

• Deep experience building high-quality user interfaces and hands-on coding
• Strong fundamentals in HTML, CSS, JS, and browser behavior
• Comfort working directly in Rails views, helpers, and partials
• Experience with or interest in Hotwire / Turbo / Stimulus
• Value pairing and want to explore AI-enabled workflows

Responsibilities

• Build alongside engineers, PMs, and designers in pairs, trios and solo on impactful features
• Lead frontend architecture and evolve patterns from real cases
• Co-own features end to end and translate product and design intent into UI
• Simplify complex workflows to improve usability, responsiveness and performance
• Mentor engineers and uphold code quality through reviews, including AI-generated code

Skills

Frontend engineering

Mentoring

Code review

UX thinking

Collaboration

Tools

HTML/CSS/JS

Job description

BackerKit helps creators bring projects to life. For over a decade, we’ve powered some of the world’s most successful crowdfunding campaigns. We’re always building the next generation of our platform, innovating, and driving the industry forward.

We’re a remote-first company of ~40 people with a diverse, close-knit team that prizes creativity, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn. We move quickly, think deeply about our users, and care about building software that lasts.

We’re looking for a full-time, Staff-level engineer who is deeply motivated by user experience, interaction design, and frontend craftsmanship and excited to bring that to life within a Ruby on Rails monolith. Perhaps this is you!

The role

This is a hands-on fullstack, product engineering role reporting to our Director of Engineering, Product, and Design. You’ll lead mainly through the code you write, review, and ship, and most of your week should be devoted to the team’s queue. We are looking for a UX- and business-minded engineer to work directly in Rails views to simplify complex workflows, create intuitive user experiences, and help transform the crowdfunding landscape.

You’ll help shape frontend patterns across the product, and turn our powerful, interconnected systems into intuitive experiences that are fast, clear, and approachable.

This role is high-context, high-collaboration, and high-impact. You’ll evolve patterns, raise the quality bar through mentorship and code review, and influence how the entire Engineering, Product & Design team thinks about user experience. Everyone at BackerKit is customer-facing, and we expect everyone to get to know the creators and backers that we serve (plus, they are awesome, just like you!).

How we build

We iterate quickly, ship small experiments, and learn from customers. We use Claude Code, practice TDD, work in one-week iterations, and ship multiple times a day.

We were a full-time pairing shop for over a decade, and pairing is still central to how we work. Right now we’re also experimenting with solo and cross-functional trio work as we figure out what a great product team looks like when everyone is also working alongside AI. Today we pair with intent: for complex or ambiguous work, knowledge transfer, onboarding, and a teammate’s growth. That balance is still evolving and may shift back toward more pairing, so we want someone who’s curious about how the team works today before helping us decide what comes next.

We’re pragmatic. Speed matters, but it isn’t a goal on its own; we want a pace we can sustain while still doing quality work and shipping the most impactful features for our business. Crowdfunding has real urgency and some chaos, so built into our values is the ability to respond quickly when creators, backers, and colleagues need us.

Our process keeps evolving, and we want your voice in it. As one of our most senior folks, you’ll bring strong opinions and your experience to those conversations. We’re highly collaborative, but we aren’t purely consensus-driven.

BackerKit is a Ruby on Rails “majestic monolith” deployed on Heroku. The codebase has been around since 2012. Despite that, it is relatively well-factored and well-tested. We’ve been tending this garden for over a decade!

We value simplicity, maintainability, communication, and shared ownership. We’re a remote-first team, and this role works the team’s shared hours, 9-5 Pacific. We work closely with teammates across the company and with the creators and backers we serve, so being reachable and ready to respond to what the day brings during those hours matters.

What you’ll do

• Build alongside engineers, PMs, and designers in pairs, trios and solo, working on the most impactful features as we innovate the crowdfunding landscape

• Lead frontend architecture, evolving patterns incrementally from real, repeated cases

• Co-own features end to end, translating product and design intent into elegant, maintainable UI and following up on usage after launch

• Simplify complex workflows and improve usability, responsiveness, and performance

• Mentor engineers and set the bar for code quality through review, holding AI-generated code to a high standard

• Report to our Director and join their engineering leadership group, alongside our other Staff Engineer and our CEO (a founding engineer who still codes daily), to advise on priorities and shape technical direction.

• Carry your share of team rotations, including on-call, PR review, and meeting host, and take actual breaks and vacations, with no off-hours or weekend work required beyond your on-call shifts

What we’re looking for

Technical, craft, and process

• Deep experience building high-quality user interfaces, and recent hands-on coding

• Strong fundamentals in HTML, CSS, JS, and browser behavior

• Comfort working directly in Rails views, helpers, and partials

• Experience with or strong interest in Hotwire / Turbo / Stimulus

• Preference for simple, maintainable systems over unnecessary abstraction

• Values pairing, and genuine interest in exploring what that looks like in this new AI-enabled world (bonus if you’ve worked in a 100% pairing environment)

Product & UX thinking

• Strong product and interaction design instincts

• Experience simplifying complex workflows

• Ability to work effectively with ambiguity

Staff-level impact

• Experience shaping engineering patterns and conventions

• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills

• Act as a go-to partner for complex or ambiguous frontend and UX challenges

• Ability to zoom out to systems (architecture and business-level) thinking while remaining comfortable bushwhacking in the weeds

• Comfort making your case on priorities, then committing to the decision once it’s made.

Most successful candidates for this role have 10+ years of software development experience working on multiple complex software projects over time and 5+ years as a staff engineer, though we do not have a strict years-of-experience requirement.

This role is a great fit if you

• Have deep knowledge of Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript

• Care deeply about how software feels to use

• Enjoy working across product, design, and backend concerns

• Prefer cohesive Rails applications over fragmented frontend stacks or SPAs

• Treat constraints as a creative tool

• Care about creators getting to make a living doing what they love

This role is likely not a fit if you

• Prefer working in React, Vue, or SPA-heavy environments

• Prefer fully decoupled frontend/backend architectures

• Prefer long periods of solo or heads-down work

• Prefer to set your own priorities rather than work from a shared team queue

• Are looking for a part-time or contract role

Compensation & benefits

• Full-time, salaried, remote-first position on a distributed team

• Competitive salary and stock option plan

• Medical, dental, vision, and 401k benefits (with employer match!)

• Stipends for supporting creators of your choosing

• Annual Learning and Development stipend to support your professional growth

• Family-friendly and focused on maintaining a healthy work/life balance

• Awesome work environment at a company with a huge opportunity

$184,000 - $235,000 a year

The base salary for this role is targeted at $184,000-$204,000/year for Denver and most remote locations, and $211,000-$235,000/year for San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed above and are determined by various factors including but not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience, and geographic location.

Research shows that while men apply for jobs when they meet ~60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented groups tend to only apply when they check every box. If this role excites you – even if you don’t meet every requirement – we’d love to hear from you.