Staff Software Engineer

Kelly Services; Cambridge (MA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 275,000; Full time

Job summary

Motion Recruitment Partners (MRP) is seeking Senior and Staff Software Engineers to establish and scale its Boston engineering presence, focusing on backend services, distributed systems, AWS infrastructure, and high-scale development.

You will work with React and Node.js for customer-facing features and collaborate with cross-functional teams to improve performance, reliability, and scale across production systems.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience (Senior level) or 10+ years (Staff level).
• Expert-level proficiency with TypeScript and Node.js.
• Extensive experience designing and operating scalable backend services in production environments.
• Strong experience building on AWS (EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, IAM, or similar).
• Experience designing distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Proven track record improving system performance, throughput, latency, and reliability.
• Experience operating services handling high-volume traffic and large-scale datasets.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native application development and observability practices.
• Experience working on teams that own critical online databases, APIs, or high-scale backend services.
• Familiarity with modern frontend technologies including React.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills in cross-functional environments.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Design scalable backend services for high-scale apps.
• Improve system performance, reliability, and latency.
• Build cloud-native infrastructure on AWS.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams on new features.
• Conduct architecture reviews, mentor engineers, and provide technical leadership.

Skills

TypeScript

Node.js

Distributed systems

AWS

React

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Kafka

ClickHouse

Flink

Spark

Job description

$200000 - $275000

A rapidly growing, venture-backed technology organization is seeking Senior and Staff Software Engineers to help establish and scale its Boston engineering presence. This team is building a modern, AI-powered customer data and CRM platform that enables businesses to better manage, activate, and derive insights from their customer data. The role is heavily focused on backend engineering, distributed systems, AWS infrastructure, and high-scale application development , while also contributing to new product experiences built with React and Node.js .

This opportunity is ideal for engineers who have built and operated large-scale production systems at leading technology companies or high-growth startups. The organization is specifically interested in candidates who have worked on core platform, infrastructure, database, analytics, billing, or data-intensive products where scalability, performance, and reliability are mission-critical.

Second Paragraph:

The engineering team is tackling complex technical challenges around real-time data processing, cloud infrastructure, and platform scalability. Engineers will have the opportunity to influence architecture, build systems that process large volumes of data, and help shape the technical direction of a growing product organization. This is an excellent opportunity for candidates who thrive in fast-moving environments and are passionate about solving difficult distributed systems problems while building customer-facing applications that deliver measurable impact.

Required Skills & Experience

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience (Senior level) or 10+ years (Staff level)
• Expert-level proficiency with TypeScript and Node.js
• Extensive experience designing and operating scalable backend services in production environments
• Strong experience building on AWS (EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, IAM, or similar)
• Experience designing distributed systems and microservices architectures
• Proven track record improving system performance, throughput, latency, and reliability
• Experience operating services handling high-volume traffic and large-scale datasets
• Strong understanding of cloud-native application development and observability practices
• Experience working on teams that own critical online databases, APIs, or high-scale backend services
• Familiarity with modern frontend technologies including React
• Strong communication and collaboration skills in cross-functional environments
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Desired Skills & Experience

• Experience at recognized technology companies or product-focused engineering organizations
• Background working at startups whose products solve infrastructure, database, analytics, observability, billing, or scalability challenges
• Experience with real-time data infrastructure technologies such as:
• Kafka
• ClickHouse
• Apache Flink
• Apache Spark
• Similar streaming or data processing platforms
• Experience building analytics, customer data, platform, or infrastructure products
• Exposure to event-driven architectures and streaming systems
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving technical strategy
• Strong understanding of database internals, data modeling, and performance optimization
• AI/ML product experience is a plus

What You Will Be Doing Tech Breakdown

• 50% TypeScript / Node.js Backend Engineering
• 20% AWS Infrastructure & Cloud Architecture
• 15% Distributed Systems & Scalability Initiatives
• 10% React Application Development
• 5% Technical Leadership & Mentorship

Daily Responsibilities

• 40% Designing and building scalable backend services
• 20% Improving system performance, reliability, and latency
• 15% Building and enhancing cloud-native infrastructure on AWS
• 15% Collaborating with product and engineering teams on new features
• 10% Architecture reviews, mentoring, and technical leadership

Interview Focus Areas / Candidate Evaluation

Candidates should be prepared to discuss:

• Specific scalability and performance metrics they have owned or influenced
• Throughput such as 1,000+ queries, requests, or entities processed per second
• Latency improvements and measurable reductions in p95/p99 response times
• Reliability, availability, and operational metrics
• Real-time data infrastructure experience
• Kafka
• ClickHouse
• Flink
• Spark
• Other large-scale streaming or analytical data platforms
• Ownership experience
• Managing production databases
• Operating mission-critical backend services
• Scaling distributed systems in production environments
• Architectural decisions and tradeoffs made while scaling products and infrastructure

Ideal Backgrounds

Candidates may come from:

• Product engineering teams at well-known technology companies
• Developer tools companies
• Data infrastructure and analytics companies
• Database platforms
• Observability platforms
• Usage-based billing platforms
• Customer data platforms
• High-growth SaaS startups with significant scaling challenges

Examples of relevant company profiles include industry-leading technology organizations similar to online marketplaces, analytics platforms, developer tooling companies, infrastructure providers, and cloud-native software businesses.

The Offer

• Competitive base salary: [Enter Compensation Range]
• Equity package
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) program
• Flexible PTO
• Hybrid Boston office environment
• Opportunity to help build and influence a growing engineering organization
• Exposure to cutting-edge AI and customer data technologies
• Career growth into senior technical leadership and architectural ownership roles

Motion Recruitment Partners (MRP) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants must be currently authorized to work on a full-time basis in the country for which they are applying, and no sponsorship is currently available. Employment is subject to the successful completion of a pre-employment screening. Accommodation will be provided in all parts of the hiring process as required under MRP’s Employment Accommodation policy. Applicants need to make their needs known in advance.