Staff Software Engineer, Full-stack

Onebrief; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Onebrief, a distributed engineering team delivering AI-powered workflow software for military planning, seeks a Staff Software Engineer to set technical direction across multiple squads. You will guide architectural choices, balance reliability with rapid delivery, and push for AI-enabled development practices.

Expect collaboration with product leadership and mentorship across teams. Ideal candidates bring 12+ years of experience, deep distributed-systems design, and full-stack comfort, with a

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of technical leadership across teams and platforms.
• Experience designing scalable distributed systems, APIs, data models, and cloud-native architectures.
• Full-stack expertise across frontend, backend, and infrastructure as needed.
• Active use of AI-assisted development tools and integration into engineering workflows.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including driving technical alignment through design docs and architecture discussions.
• Comfortable leading through ambiguity and influencing without direct authority.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive technical strategy across multiple squads, shaping architectural decisions with lasting impact.
• Tackle ambiguous technical challenges and translate them into scalable solutions teams can execute.
• Build shared systems, patterns, and platform capabilities to move engineering faster and deliver more effectively.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to influence the technical roadmap for long-term health and fast delivery.
• Evolve AI-assisted development practices, standards, and decision-making across the org.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, architectural guidance, and cross-team collaboration.

Skills

12+ years experience

Distributed systems design

Full-stack development

AI-assisted development

Technical communication

Ambiguity leadership

Tools

React

TypeScript

Node.js

PostgreSQL

Redis

Kubernetes

AWS

OAuth/OIDC

Keycloak

Terraform

Job description

Consequential Work. Dedicated People.

About Onebrief

Onebrief builds collaboration and AI-powered workflow software for military planning and operational coordination.

Military planning is complex by nature, requiring teams to coordinate information, people, and decisions across systems and locations. Onebrief brings planning, collaboration, simulation, and AI into one connected environment, helping teams test strategies, adapt to changing conditions, and make decisions with greater clarity when the stakes are real.

We are a distributed team of builders from military, operational, and technology backgrounds who care deeply about improving how important work gets done. Some team members work remotely, while others work directly alongside customers in operational environments around the world.

Founded in 2019, Onebrief is backed by leading investors including General Catalyst, Battery Ventures, Insight Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and Human Capital. Valued at more than $2 billion, we continue to invest in product innovation, AI capabilities, and team growth.

Engineering at Onebrief

Engineering at Onebrief means building systems that must perform reliably in complex, high-stakes environments where operational outcomes matter more than activity, output, or elegant theory alone.

This is work for engineers who care about reliability, adaptability, observability, and building systems that succeed under real-world conditions. As AI transforms how software is built, engineering here is increasingly focused on verification, judgment, and helping teams operate more effectively at scale.

You’ll likely feel energized here if you care about:

• meaningful technical challenges

• systems that operate under real-world constraints

• outcomes over activity

• and grounded teams focused on solving important problems well.

Why this role exists

Onebrief builds software for military planning, where the cost of a slow or wrong decision is measured in something more than a missed sprint. That raises the bar on the engineering itself. The systems have to hold up under real operational load, in environments where the customer can’t tolerate failures or downtime.

A Staff Software Engineer sets the technical direction that keeps that bar met as the product and the org grow. Not by writing the most code, but by making the decisions that everyone else’s code depends on: how a system is structured, where the hard boundaries sit, which tradeoffs are worth the complexity. A Staff Software Engineer is delivering at a high level, building the foundation in the shared architecture no one team owns outright.

Onebrief is building in the AI-native era, and Staff engineers here lead on how the org uses these tools well: what to trust to them, where human judgment stays non-negotiable, and how to keep quality and ownership intact as the leverage goes up.

What You’ll Do

• Own and drive technical strategy across multiple squads, shaping architectural decisions that have a lasting impact on Onebrief’s platform.

• Tackle the company’s most ambiguous technical challenges, turning loosely defined problems into scalable solutions that teams can execute.

• Build the shared systems, patterns, and platform capabilities that enable engineering teams to move faster and deliver more effectively.

• Partner with engineering and product leadership to influence the technical roadmap, balancing long-term platform health with rapid customer delivery.

• Shape how engineering works by evolving AI-assisted development practices, engineering standards, and technical decision-making across the organization.

• Raise the technical bar by mentoring engineers through design reviews, architectural guidance, and cross-team collaboration.

What We Look For

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of technical leadership across teams and platforms.

• Strong experience designing scalable distributed systems, APIs, data models, and cloud-native architectures.

• Full-stack expertise with the ability to work across frontend, backend, and infrastructure as needed.

• Active user of AI-assisted development tools, with a thoughtful approach to integrating them into engineering workflows.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including driving technical alignment through design docs and architecture discussions.

• Comfortable leading through ambiguity and influencing without direct authority.

Nice to Have Qualifications

• Background in mission-critical or high-compliance domains (FedRAMP, SOC2, DoD)

• Experience with authentication and identity infrastructure at scale (OIDC, SAML, federated identity)

• Prior experience in a high-growth B2B SaaS environment scaling through significant inflection points

• Familiarity with event-driven architectures and the trade-offs of async-first system design

Indicators of Success

A successful Staff Software Engineer will:

• Set technical direction on a problem that spans multiple squads, framing it clearly enough that teams move in the same direction instead of solving it in isolation

• Make the architectural calls that others build on, choosing the tradeoffs that save the org months rather than the ones that get paid down for years

• Own the shared architecture in the seams no single squad holds, the systems that everyone depends on and no one is scoped to

• Raise the technical judgment of the engineers around them, so good decisions get made even when they’re not in the room

• Refines the standard for how the org uses AI tooling well, keeping quality and ownership intact as the leverage goes up

Tools, Systems & Technologies

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Vite, shared component libraries, client-side observability

• Backend: Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, secure RESTful APIs, distributed services

• Authentication & Authorization: Keycloak, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, ABAC, JWT, federated identity provider integrations

• Infrastructure: Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, container security and secrets management

• Integrations: CSV/Excel/KML importers, PDF exports, DoD and enterprise data systems, secure API gateways, auditing pipelines

Notice to Third Party Recruitment Agencies
Please note that Onebrief does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters or employment agencies. In the absence of an executed Recruitment Services Agreement, there will be no obligation to any referral compensation or recruiter fee. In the event a recruiter or agency submits a resume or candidate without an agreement Onebrief explicitly reserves the right to pursue and hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the recruiter or agency. Any unsolicited resumes, including those submitted to hiring managers, shall be deemed the property of Onebrief.