Staff Software Engineer, Fullstack

Thrive Market; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Thrive Market in the United States is seeking an engineer with a systems mindset and strong CS fundamentals to lead Member Growth's architecture. You will set technical direction, drive proposals, and raise the bar for design and reliability across teams.

You will collaborate with Frontend Core, Backend Core, and Data teams, turning ambiguous problems into clear plans, diagrams, and data-backed decisions, delivering scalable solutions.

Qualifications

• Strong CS fundamentals
• Excellent object-oriented design and relational data modeling
• Systems thinking with focus on architecture and platforms
• Ability to produce proposals, diagrams, and data-driven recommendations

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for Member Growth's systems and architecture across pods.
• Identify high-leverage problems and put them on the roadmap with a proposal.
• Write tech designs and RFCs with diagrams, options, tradeoffs, and recommendations.
• Make system-level decisions on eventing, orchestration, caching, and services.
• Design for horizontal scale and low latency under real traffic patterns.
• Decompose services into scalable components and plan migrations.
• Collaborate across Frontend Core, Backend Core, Data, and product teams.
• Break down multi-team problems into plans with owners and timelines.
• Build consensus with engineers, Product, and leadership; defend shipped work with data.
• Test-driven development; prioritize quality, reliability, observability.
• Bring Product and Design options with a recommendation.

Skills

CS fundamentals

OO design

Relational data modeling

Systems mindset

Architecture decisions

Proposals/Writing

Data-driven decisions

Tools

Kafka

SQS

Temporal

Airflow

DAGs

Caching

Job description

ABOUT THRIVE MARKET

Thrive Market was founded in 2014 with a mission to make healthy and sustainable living easy and affordable for everyone. As an online, membership-based market, we deliver the highest quality healthy, and sustainable products at member-only prices, while matching every paid membership with a free one for someone in need. Every day, we leverage innovative technology and member-first thinking to help our over 1,700,000+ members find better products, support better brands, and build a better world in the process. We are also a Certified B Corporation, a Public Benefit Corporation, and a Climate Neutral Certified company.

Join us as we bring healthy and sustainable living to millions of Americans in the years to come.

The Role

We are not looking for a programmer or a language specialist. We are looking for an engineer, someone with strong CS fundamentals, great object-oriented design, great relational data modeling, and a systems mindset. Someone who reaches for architecture, patterns, and platforms before reaching for syntax, and who picks the right tool for the job rather than the one they already know. At Staff, that means leverage. You bring the ideas to the table instead of waiting for them. You set the technical bar and raise the people around you to it. You organize ambiguous problems into a plan and drive them to done. You win people over with clear diagrams, written proposals, and data, not seniority.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Set technical direction for Member Growth's systems. Own the architecture and its evolution across pods, not just your own.
• Find the highest-leverage problems and opportunities in the funnel, the platform, and our ways of working, and put them on the roadmap with a proposal.
• Write the proposals. Tech designs and RFCs with architecture diagrams, options, tradeoffs, and a clear recommendation. Make hard decisions easy to understand and easy to make.
• Make system-level calls on when to introduce eventing (Kafka, SQS), workflow orchestration (Temporal, Airflow, DAGs), caching, async pipelines, or new services, and when not to.
• Design for horizontal scale and low, uniform latency under real Thrive traffic patterns.
• Decompose existing services into scalable components where it materially helps. Plan the migration path, not just the end state.
• Work cross-team and cross-function. Partner with Frontend Core, Backend Core, Data, and other product teams to align on shared systems, boundaries, and contracts. Represent Member Growth in technical decisions that affect us.
• Take a fuzzy, multi-team problem, break it into a plan with clear owners, and see it through. Unblock others.
• Build consensus with engineers, Product, and leadership. Disagree clearly. Commit fully.
• Tie engineering decisions to outcomes. Instrument what you build. Defend what you ship with data.
• Test-driven from the start. Quality, reliability, and observability are first-class, not afterthoughts.
• Bring Product and Design options and a recommend