About the RoleGlossGenius has been empowering independent entrepreneurs in the beauty and wellness space to pursue their dreams and successfully grow their businesses. As we continue to scale, we're expanding the highest-innovation teams, and we're building 0-to-1 products we expect to be a massive revenue driver for the business.
As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will act as a critical technical leader, architect, and enabler. You will own and support the technical direction of our AI enabled products, turning ambitious initiatives into clear, buildable roadmaps. This is an individual contributor role with a healthy balance of leadership and execution (roughly 60% technical planning, architecture, and proof-of-concepts, and 40% hands-on building). You will be a force multiplier for our talented engineering team - unblocking technical hurdles, keeping a healthy backlog of build-ready work, and helping to scale our AI powered products.
What You'll Do- Lead technical planning, system architecture, scaling our AI powered products and 0-to-1 product builds , weighing long-term tradeoffs with precision
- Write high-quality code and rapidly build proof-of-concepts to validate architecture options and tackle the team's most complex technical challenges
- Act as a technical mentor and accelerator for backend engineers on the team, proactively identifying systemic technical debt, resolving blockers, and raising the bar for engineering excellence
- Partner closely with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership to turn ambiguous business goals into clear, well-architected initiatives, keeping a healthy backlog of forward-looking work
- Embed cutting-edge AI workflows (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) into your daily development practices, helping shape how our engineering organization leverages AI effectively and responsibly
What We're Looking For- 7+ years of professional engineering experience, with a strong focus on web, and a track record of leading high-impact technical work
- Proven experience operating at a senior-to-staff level, with a track record of owning system design and architectural choices for high-scale or high-growth products
- Strong backend depth with Kotlin (experience with TypeScript is a plus)
- Solid understanding of modern cloud infrastructure, specifically AWS and Kubernetes (you don't need to be a pure infra specialist, but you know how to navigate it)
- Hands-on experience integrating AI models and LLMs into customer-facing products
- Experience working in early-stage, startup, or high-innovation environments. You are comfortable shipping quickly, iterating rapidly, and navigating ambiguity
- Exceptional communication skills with a natural ability to collaborate closely with PMs, Designers, and other engineering teams to align on product vision
- Experience with or enthusiasm for AI-assisted development tools (like Claude Code) to maximize engineering velocity
Benefits & Perks - Flexible PTO
- Competitive health & dental insurance options, with premiums partially or fully covered by GG
- In-person opportunities that are designed to help team members foster collaboration and build community (ie; working out of a co-working space, team dinners, and other team building activities)
- Fertility and adoption benefits via Carrot
- Generous, fully-paid parental leave policy
- 401k benefit - employees are eligible to contribute starting day 1 of employment
- Professional Development - employees receive a yearly stipend for approved learning and educational-related expenses
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- Dependent Care FSA
- Home office support
At GlossGenius, we celebrate our differences and are committed to creating a workplace where all employees feel supported and empowered to do their best work. We believe this benefits not only our employees but our product, customers, and community as well.
