Staff Software Engineer - Boston

Traveltechessentialist; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 174,000 - 205,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation and equity ownership

401(k) with company matching

20 vacation days

Comprehensive health benefits

Paid parental leave

Relocation support

Job summary

Traveltechessentialist is seeking a Staff Software Engineer in Boston to lead technical vision for new product launches. You will coordinate across teams, mentor engineers, and transform business objectives into effective engineering approaches.

Ideal candidates will have a strong background in product engineering, AI-driven development, and demonstrated leadership in complex projects.

Qualifications

• Experience in coordinating multi-team initiatives.
• Ability to design scalable and evolvable systems.
• Experience handling incidents and defining SLOs.

Responsibilities

• Own technical vision and coordinate direction across teams.
• Actively contribute while mentoring and collaborating.
• Propose architectural changes aligned with business goals.

Skills

Product engineering mindset

Cross-team technical leadership

Architectural judgment

Operational maturity

AI-driven development experience

Tools

Python

AWS

Job description

Perk is growing its engineering footprint in North America, and we’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help us do it right. You’ll play a central role in a new product launch as Perk continues its expansion—a rare chance to shape something from the ground up.

How we work:

At Perk, we believe the best work happens when great people come together in small teams with a shared sense of purpose. Each team has real ownership of its domain, a genuine say in what gets built, and the autonomy to make it happen. We care about impact and trust our people to deliver it.

What it means to be a Staff Engineer at Perk:

• Own the technical vision across teams and coordinate a shared technical direction across multiple teams.
• Be hands‑on while spending most of the time actively contributing within one or two teams, and the rest mentoring, unblocking delivery, and collaborating with dependent teams.
• Shape how we work, not just what we build—turn business goals into engineering approaches, propose architectural changes, and ensure the team invests its energy where it counts.
• Raise the bar for everyone around you through mentorship, design reviews, pairing, and explaining technical complexity to the wider business.
• Lead across boundaries, coordinate across squads, drive engineering initiatives, and connect the dots when dependencies or blockers arise.

Desired skills and experience:

• Product engineering mindset: own problems from customer discovery to deployment and impact measurement.
• Cross‑team technical leadership and experience coordinating multi‑team initiatives, managing dependencies, and keeping long‑horizon projects moving.
• Architectural judgment: design scalable, evolvable systems and articulate a clear technical roadmap.
• “You build it, you run it” experience—monitoring, testing, rolling out, and operating services in production.
• Domain complexity experience—ideally flights or travel, fintech, or any industry with significant underlying complexity.
• Backend‑heavy, full‑stack comfortable—proficiency in backend systems, familiarity with Python and AWS, and the ability to learn new tools quickly.
• Operational maturity—lead observability and reliability practices; define SLOs, handle incidents, and conduct blameless post‑mortems.
• Mentorship and influence track record—levelling up engineers through mentorship, design reviews, and modeling great engineering.
• AI‑driven development experience or strong interest in modern AI‑augmented workflows, including agentic coding and AI‑assisted code review.

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation and equity ownership.
• 20 vacation days, 12 public holidays and time off for family and personal events.
• Three medical plans with company contributions and an HSA option for HDHP plans.
• Comprehensive health and wellness benefits, dental, vision, and access to Wellhub’s gym subscription.
• Life and disability policies with options to add additional protection.
• 401(k) plan with company matching.
• Pet insurance partner discounts.
• Annual summer party and other Perk events.
• Spring Health wellbeing partner—access to therapy and coaching sessions.
• 12‑16 weeks paid parental leave.
• 16 paid volunteering hours per year.
• Up to 20 “Work from Anywhere” days per year.
• Four‑week fully paid sabbatical after five years of service.
• Relocation support to one of our hubs.

Compensation

Compensation for this role is a combination of salary and stock options. The anticipated base salary range is $174,000–$205,000 per year; actual compensation may vary based on specific qualifications, experience, and other job‑related factors.

AI at Perk

• AI is embedded in our workflows—Notion, Jira, GitHub, and Slack are AI‑connected to speed up onboarding and day‑to‑day work, including automated AI PR review for every pull request.
• We embrace agentic coding and AI as an active collaborator, not just a prompt‑by‑prompt co‑pilot.
• Candidates are expected to use AI tools in coding interviews; the bar remains understanding your code and owning what you produce.

How We Work

At Perk, we take an IRL‑first approach to work, requiring you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We believe in meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity, and overall workplace satisfaction.

Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We’re an equal opportunity employer, which means you’re welcome at Perk regardless of how you look, where you’re from, or anything else that makes you, well, you.