The RoleWe're looking for a Staff Engineer to be the technical backbone of the Tin Can platform as we scale. This isn't a role where you wait to be pointed at problems: you find them, frame them, and drive the solution. You'll set the architectural direction for our backend and platform systems, raise the technical bar across the team, and make the hard calls on tradeoffs that will shape how Tin Can grows. You're already building with tools most teams are still evaluating.
You'll work closely with our Head of Engineering and the rest of the team - and you'll be the person they turn to when something is ambiguous, complex, or high stakes. You're primarily a backend and platform engineer, but you have enough range to give credible guidance across the stack. You code, but you also partner with AI to write more of it, faster.
This is a high-trust role for someone who's done this before, someone who knows what good looks like and can bring a small team along with them. You don't need to manage people to lead them.
What You'll Do- Own architectural decisions for our backend and platform systems
- Set the technical direction and standards the rest of the engineering team builds against
- Drive the hardest, most cross-cutting problems that don't fit neatly into one lane
- Identify and address technical debt that threatens our ability to scale or ship
- Partner with the Head of Engineering on sequencing, tradeoffs, and what to build next
- Give credible technical guidance across the stack without needing to own all of it
- Ensure everything we build is secure, observable, and designed with the families we serve in mind
What We're Looking For- 10+ years of backend and platform engineering, with clear examples of setting technical direction
- Experience with IoT systems: device provisioning, firmware management, or real-time data pipelines
- Deep fluency in Node.js and TypeScript; comfortable owning AWS infrastructure
- You've seen scale and know which problems actually matter at each stage
- Strong architectural instincts: you've made hard calls, lived and learned
- You actively shape how your team uses AI, not just how you use it yourself
- You're at the frontier: agentic workflows, AI-assisted architecture, tools most teams haven't adopted yet
- You write code regularly and expect to keep doing so
- Collaborative and low-ego: you lead through clarity and track record, not authority
If you're excited by the idea of taking a solid technical foundation and scaling it to support thousands of families - while making it more reliable, secure, and resilient along the way - we'd love to meet you.
