Staff Software Engineer

Come Near; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual performance bonus

80% employer-paid health and wellness

403(b) retirement plan with 7% match

Very generous PTO

Three annual rest weeks

Education Reimbursement stipend

Flourishing Fund stipend

Job summary

Come Near is a distributed nonprofit behind the He Gets Us campaign. We are hiring a Staff Engineer to own the technical design of our personalized digital engagement platform, guiding architecture across products, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure.

You will collaborate with AI and data teams on personalization, event tracking, and data handling, while enforcing security baselines and scalable, reliable systems for high-traffic events.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, at Staff/Principal/Architect level.
• Deep expertise in modern web platform architecture (Next.js or similar), API design, content platforms, edge/CDN architecture, mobile platform knowledge.
• Strong cloud infrastructure expertise (AWS) including IAM, resiliency, autoscaling, observability, cost optimization.
• Experience owning infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and CI/CD.
• Experience defining/testing strategies across unit/integration/e2e.
• Experience with external agencies/vendors in shared codebases.
• Experience designing systems with high reliability and performance.

Responsibilities

• Design and document end-to-end architecture across products, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure.
• Define technical standards, API patterns, and integration contracts for internal and vendor teams.
• Architect for reliability, scalability, observability, and security in high-traffic scenarios.
• Review vendor designs for architectural quality, security, and maintainability.
• Collaborate with AI/data teams on personalization, event tracking, and data handling.

Skills

Staff engineer level

Next.js

AWS

Terraform

CI/CD

Security & privacy

Architecture design

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Next.js

API design

Job description

Come Near is a group of people moved to raise the public conversation about Jesus. They create, curate, and connect people to authentic Jesus stories and experiences. Most widely recognized is the group’s “He Gets Us” campaign, which invites people to reconsider Jesus and has reached millions of Americans since launching in 2021. To learn more, visit comenear.org.

Candidates for this role are required to sign the organization’s Statement of Faith, which closely aligns with Come Near’s mission-driven focus of inviting all people one step closer to the authentic Jesus from wherever they are.

POSITION SUMMARY

Come Near is a lean, fully distributed nonprofit behind the He Gets Us campaign, reaching hundreds of millions of people across the world’s largest media moments. We’re hiring a Staff Engineer to own the technical design of our highest-priority initiative: a personalized digital engagement platform.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design and document end-to-end architecture spanning products, data platforms, and cloud infrastructure.
• Define technical standards, API patterns, and integration contracts for both internal and vendor engineering teams.
• Architect systems for reliability, scalability, observability, and operational resilience, including support for high-impact, high-traffic events and traffic spikes.
• Review vendor designs, implementations, and code contributions for architectural quality, security, performance, and long-term maintainability.
• Collaborate with the AI and data teams on personalization logic, event tracking, and pipeline architecture, with specific attention to how personal/sensitive user data is collected, stored, and used.
• Set and enforce a practical security and data privacy baseline appropriate to handling sensitive personal data at scale.
• Identify and mitigate architectural, security, operational, and vendor-related risks before they become delivery, reliability, or business issues.
• Remain an active technical contributor by shipping critical code, prototyping architectural decisions before standardizing them, and leading through implementation rather than direction alone.
• Make build-vs-buy and build-vs-vendor recommendations that balance technical quality, delivery speed, operational complexity, and cost.
• Set the standard for technical documentation across the organization, including architecture decision records (ADRs), design documents, technical standards, and operational runbooks.
• Advise the Sr. Engineering Manager and VP of Engineering and Analytics on architecture strategy, technical risk, platform evolution, and major technical investment decisions.

COMPETENCIES

• Able to influence internal engineers and external vendor teams without formal authority through technical expertise, sound judgment, and credibility.
• Async-fluent and self-directed, capable of driving complex, multi-week technical initiatives with minimal oversight.
• Strong technical writing skills, producing clear architecture decisions, design documents, implementation guidance, and review feedback.
• Comfortable holding a technical line under pressure, pushing back when shortcuts introduce unacceptable long-term risk.
• Pragmatic about tradeoffs, balancing engineering rigor with delivery realities in a lean, mission-driven environment.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and incomplete requirements, bringing structure and clarity to loosely defined problems.
• Demonstrates strong systems thinking, understanding how technical decisions affect reliability, security, maintainability, cost, scalability, and team effectiveness.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including meaningful experience operating at the Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Architect, or equivalent level; education - at minimum a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field required.
• Deep expertise in modern web platform architecture, including frameworks such as Next.js or comparable technologies, API design, content platforms, and edge/CDN architecture, plus working knowledge of mobile platform architecture.
• Strong cloud infrastructure expertise (AWS preferred), including identity and access management, resiliency patterns, autoscaling, observability, and cost optimization.
• Experience owning infrastructure-as-code practices (Terraform or equivalent) and CI/CD systems, not merely consuming them.
• Experience defining, improving, or scaling testing and quality strategies across unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Experience working alongside external agencies, vendors, or contractors in shared codebases and architectural environments, including reviewing and challenging technical decisions when necessary.
• Experience designing, building, and operating highly scalable distributed systems with demanding reliability and performance requirements.

BONUS SKILLS

• Experience architecting or operating large-scale data platforms, analytics infrastructure, or data-intensive systems.
• Experience building, integrating, or shipping AI/ML-powered products and capabilities.
• Familiarity with MLOps practices, including deploying, monitoring, and operating machine learning systems in production.

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES

• A personal relationship with Jesus and a passion for Come Near’s mission.
• A heart for service, humility, and collaborative leadership.
• An initiative-taking, meticulous approach to planning and execution

BENEFITS

• Annual performance bonus (based on organizational performance)
• 80% employer-paid health and wellness coverage
• 403(b) retirement plan with 7% employer match
• Very generous PTO
• Three annual company rest weeks (around July 4 and between Christmas and New Years)
• Flourishing Fund stipend
• Education Reimbursement stipend annually
• Much more!