5-7 years experience in web development, focusing on backend technologies.
Strong knowledge of PHP or another server-side programming language.
Proficient in SQL and relational databases, with experience troubleshooting performance and data integrity issues.
Ability to navigate complex application logic and integrations within production environments.
Familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, prioritizing backend tasks.
Excellent problem-solving skills and sound technical judgment.
Strong written communication skills and disciplined documentation habits.
Responsibilities
Design and develop features for the e-commerce site and business systems.
Take ownership of critical components like checkout, payments, and inventory management.
Evaluate business problems, recommend solutions, and implement changes.
Troubleshoot complex application and integration issues in the production environment.
Enhance application performance, security, and maintainability.
Modernize the application while maintaining stability and business continuity.
Document systems and architectural decisions to ensure knowledge accessibility.
Benefits
Up to 99% company-covered health, dental & vision insurance premiums.
Partial coverage for dependent health insurance.
Health flexible spending account options.
Company-paid long-term disability and life insurance.
Commuter benefits for local employees.
Paid time off and company holidays.
401(k) plan with a 4% match from the company.
Employee discounts and free snacks.
Full Job Description
Job Description
Role:
We are looking for a backend-leaning Senior Full-Stack Engineer to help build and evolve the software behind our e-commerce business.
You'll work directly with our principal engineer, help shape technical decisions, and modernize a successful platform through thoughtful, incremental improvements.
This is an opportunity for unusually broad ownership inside a stable, profitable business, not a narrowly defined role maintaining one small service.
Responsibilities:
Design, build, test, and maintain features across JetPens' customer-facing e-commerce site and internal business systems.
Own important work in areas such as checkout, payments, inventory, order processing, fulfillment, and customer communications.
Understand business problems, evaluate tradeoffs, propose solutions, and carry work through implementation and deployment.
Investigate difficult problems across application logic, relational data, third-party integrations, and the production environment.
Improve application performance, reliability, security, observability, and maintainability.
Modernize the application through carefully scoped changes that preserve stability and business continuity.
Document systems, operational procedures, and architectural decisions so knowledge remains accessible and useful.
Requirements:
A track record of independently designing, shipping, and maintaining significant production web features.
Strong backend engineering fundamentals in PHP or another server-side language.
Strong SQL and relational-database skills, including experience investigating performance and data-integrity problems.
The ability to trace difficult problems across application logic, data, integrations, and the production environment.
Comfort working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while remaining primarily backend-focused.
Sound technical judgment, including the ability to explain tradeoffs, identify risks, and choose solutions appropriate to the problem.
Willingness to understand existing code and business behavior before changing them.
Clear written communication and disciplined documentation habits.
Bonus Points:
Professional experience developing PHP applications.
Experience with e-commerce, payment processing, inventory, ERP, or warehouse systems.
Experience improving database or application performance.
Familiarity with application infrastructure, caching, search, observability, or security.
Experience incrementally modernizing a large, mature application.
Experience working effectively on a small engineering team.
Technology Environment:
Our platform is a large, mature web application built primarily with PHP and MySQL.
Most interfaces are server-rendered, with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript used for customer-facing and internal applications.
The broader environment includes Linux-based production systems, containerized services, caching and search systems, and integrations with payment providers and other external services.
You do not need previous experience with every part of this environment. Strong backend engineering fundamentals and the ability to learn an unfamiliar codebase matter more than matching a checklist of tools.
Prior PHP experience is helpful but not required, but you must be interested in using PHP as your primary development language.
Hours & Pay:
Business hours are 9:00 AM PST - 5:30 PM PST.
Anticipated starting salary range:
San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Seattle:
$185K - $220K / year.
Other U.S. locations:
$155K - $220K / year.
This role may be local or remote.
Remote employees must maintain at least four hours of overlap with Pacific Time business hours.
We prefer candidates who can be employed in the United States, but we may consider exceptional international candidates.
This is an exempt position.
Benefits:
Benefits for eligible U.S. employees include:
Up to 99% company-paid premiums for health, dental & vision insurance.
Partial dependent health insurance.
Health flexible spending account.
Company-paid long-term disability & life insurance.
Commuter benefits.
Benefits for all employees regardless of location include:
