This role sits on the Ecosystem Health team and owns the end-to-end stack behind Grindr's moderation - the tools used by human moderators, automated photo moderation, fraud and spam prevention, and regulatory compliance . As a Staff engineer, you'll set the technical direction for how we architect, ship, and scale these systems, working across the front-end and back-end with equal fluency. You'll partner directly with Product, Design, Marketing, and Backend Platform to make decisions that show up in production within weeks, not quarters. The systems you build are trusted by millions of users to protect their privacy and serve them reliably at scale.
This is a hybrid role based in our Chicago office and will require you to be in person Tuesdays and Thursdays.
About the Job:- Own the React tools that power our human moderators, and their backend, from design through delivery
- Build and ship features across the full stack, coordinating with the teams whose work touches this surface
- Build security, privacy, and accessibility into everything you ship, millions of users trust Grindr to protect them
- Maintain existing third-party integrations and build new ones as we grow into being AI first
- Drive code review culture and champion testing and reliability practices, mentoring engineers through your own work
- Apply AI tools to your day-to-day engineering work and help build out the team's shared AI practices
Role Requirements:- Deep production experience across both front-end and back-end systems, with a track record of owning features or services end to end
- Strong proficiency building user interfaces with React, including a solid grasp of modern web performance, state management, and accessibility
- Strong back-end experience in at least one modern language (Java, Kotlin, Node.js, Python, or Go), with the judgment to make sound trade-offs between complexity, performance, and delivery speed
- Hands-on experience operating cloud-native systems on AWS or GCP
- Solid understanding of database fundamentals, with production experience across Kafka and SQL
- Applies advanced AI prompting techniques for complex tasks, critically audits AI outputs, and documents and shares AI workflows with the team
You May Thrive in this Role if You:- Have built and operated consumer-facing web products at scale, where performance, privacy, and reliability are non-negotiable
- Enjoy driving code review culture and mentoring engineers earlier in their careers
- Care equally about the system you're building and the experience it delivers
- Have experience working on distributed teams across time zones and borders
Benefits and Perks:- Health, Dental & Vision Full premium coverage for you. Partial coverage for dependents.
- Family Formation Up to $300,000 in fertility and family-building support, covering IVF, surrogacy, egg freezing, and adoption.
- Retirement: 401(k) with 6% match and immediate vesting.
- Compensation: Industry-competitive compensation, company bonus, and equity for every employee.
- Gender-Affirming Care : Industry-leading gender-affirming offerings with up to 90% cost coverage, access to Included Health, monthly stipends for HRT, and more.
- Time Off & Rest Flexible vacation policy. Two company-wide rest weeks per year.
- Other Benefits: Monthly stipends for cell phone, internet, wellness, food, and commuting, breakfast/lunch
