Staff Backend Engineer
San Francisco, CA - USA
Job Summary
Staff Backend Engineer
Location:3 days in-office in San Francisco CA
Employment Type: Full-time
Experience: 8 years
Focus: Backend Architecture Marketplace Infrastructure Microservices EKS AI-Native Engineering
About Our Client
Our client is a fast-growing consumer marketplace platform expanding into new collectibles categories. The company is scaling quickly and building the backend infrastructure needed to support high-volume transactions new vertical launches and a more modern reliable engineering foundation.
This is an opportunity to join a high-ownership engineering team working on large-scale backend systems marketplace infrastructure and category expansion in a fast-moving consumer environment.
About the Role
Our client is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to help scale the backbone of their platform as they expand into new collectibles categories.
This person will be a highly opinionated technical architect who can own large projects end-to-end from designing container-based systems to launching new product categories and migrating legacy systems into scalable microservices.
This is a strong fit for an engineer who can balance greenfield architecture with legacy modernization enjoys working in a high-scale marketplace environment and is comfortable using AI-powered development tools as part of their daily workflow.
What Youll Do
Design and scale container-based backend architecture using EKS
Help scale backend systems from roughly 1.5B to 2.5B monthly transactions
Build backend systems for new category launches with unique inventory marketplace and scaling requirements
Own major backend projects from architecture through implementation deployment and iteration
Migrate monolithic repositories into microservices while keeping existing systems stable
Improve production reliability through observability monitoring and scalability planning
Work with tools like Datadog and Sentry to identify troubleshoot and improve system performance
Partner closely with DevOps product and cross-functional teams to ship reliable marketplace infrastructure
Use AI-powered engineering tools including Claude Code and Cursor as part of the development and PR workflow
Balance speed reliability and long-term architecture in a fast-paced consumer marketplace environment
What Were Looking For
8 years of backend engineering experience
Strong experience designing and scaling backend systems in production
Experience with container-based infrastructure ideally EKS or Kubernetes-based environments
Strong understanding of microservices architecture and monolith-to-microservices migrations
Experience building systems that support high-volume transactions marketplace workflows or consumer-facing platforms
Strong production reliability instincts including observability monitoring and scalability planning
Experience working with tools like Datadog Sentry or similar observability platforms
Ability to own large technical projects end-to-end
Strong architectural opinions with the ability to collaborate in a low-ego team environment
Comfort using AI-powered development tools as part of the daily engineering workflow
High ownership strong communication and a bias toward shipping
Why This Opportunity
Join a fast-growing marketplace platform expanding into new collectibles categories
Own backend architecture that supports billions of transactions each month
Work on both greenfield systems and meaningful legacy modernization
Help launch new verticals with unique inventory and scaling challenges
Partner with a high-ownership low-ego engineering team
Use modern AI-powered engineering workflows to move faster and improve development quality
Step into a Staff-level role with real technical influence across architecture reliability and platform scale
Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate is a Staff-level backend engineer who has scaled production systems owned complex architecture and helped modernize backend platforms without breaking the business.
They are opinionated but collaborative comfortable operating in ambiguity and excited to build reliable systems for a fast-growing consumer marketplace.
Required Experience:
Staff IC
About Company
Nxt Level is a recruiting agency specializing in high-level technical recruiting in engineering, video games, and executive search.