Staff Software Engineer

2 x Senior and Staff Backend Engineer Roles | NYC | $180k-$240k + Equity

I’m working with two fast-growing Series B technology companies in New York, both looking for genuinely strong Senior and Staff-level backend engineers.

The businesses are very different, but the engineering bar is similar: complex backend systems, significant architecture ownership, strong judgement and engineers who still want to write production code.

One is building the next generation of a travel and hospitality booking/distribution platform.

The other is building an AI-powered healthcare claims platform processing complex data and workflows for US health plans.

Both are serious hands-on Staff IC roles.

Role 1 — Travel / Marketplace / Transactional Systems 🌎

You’d be joining a growing travel technology business working with thousands of hotels and building out the infrastructure behind its booking and distribution platform.

The work includes

• Booking, reservation, payment and inventory systems
• External APIs and major partner integrations
• Transactional correctness, retries, idempotency and reconciliation
• Complex relational data modelling
• Distributed systems and production reliability
• Owning architecture across a major backend domain
• Setting patterns and technical direction for other engineers
• Remaining hands-on with production code

They’re particularly interested in engineers from payments, marketplaces, commerce, travel, bookings, orders or other correctness-sensitive environments.

Exact language isn’t important. Strong engineering judgement is.

You do not need to already hold a Staff title if you’re clearly operating at that level.

Role 2 — AI / Healthtech / Data Platforms 🤖

The second company is building an AI-powered claims operations platform for the US healthcare market.

This role is heavily focused on:

• Backend architecture
• Large-scale data processing
• APIs and distributed workflows
• Complex relational data models
• AI / LLM-enabled systems
• RAG, agentic workflows and modern AI infrastructure
• Reliability, observability and auditability
• Cross-team architecture and technical direction
• Mentoring and influencing experienced engineers

They’re especially interested in engineers with backgrounds across high-growth technology, healthcare, fintech, data platforms or AI-heavy products.

For this one, they’re looking for someone with 10+ years of engineering experience and genuine formal Staff-level experience.

What both companies want ✅

• Deep backend engineering experience
• Strong architecture and system-design judgement
• Experience owning difficult production systems
• Excellent API and relational data-modelling fundamentals
• Evidence that your technical decisions influence engineers beyond your own tickets
• Someone comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
• Strong communication — you need to explain why you made a decision, what alternatives you considered and what trade-offs you accepted
• Hands-on engineers who still enjoy building rather than moving entirely into management
• Strong use of modern AI-assisted engineering tools is increasingly valuable

Why these are interesting 👀

These aren’t Staff roles where you sit above the engineering team drawing diagrams.

Both companies want people who can:

design it → make the decision → explain the trade-off → build it → get it into production → make the wider team better.

📍 Manhattan, NYC

🏢 3–4 days per week in office

💰 $180k-$240k base + equity

👨 💻 Staff-level individual contributor

🚀 Series B / high-growth environments

❌ No visa sponsorship

If you’re a Staff, Principal, Lead or exceptionally strong Senior Backend Engineer looking for serious technical ownership without moving away from coding, drop me a message.

jacob@refactorrecruitment.com