[Hiring] Software Engineer @ThriveCart

Role Description

Full-ownership software engineer responsible for building a new system in TypeScript that will replace our existing PHP system, while maintaining the current PHP system throughout the transition. This is not a hand-off role — you take a problem from requirement to production and own it there. You'll work across both stacks, make technical decisions, and be accountable for what you ship.

We expect you to use AI coding tools as a core part of how you work. Not occasionally — daily. Your velocity, code quality, and problem-solving should reflect effective AI tool use. What we care about is judgment: understanding what you ship, making the right decisions, and knowing when to push back on AI output.

This description applies across experience levels (L1–L4). Interview depth and expectations are calibrated to your level.

What You'll Own

• Features from requirements to production: you break them down, build them, ship them, monitor them
• Technical decisions within your scope, with clear trade-off reasoning
• Quality of your code and the areas you touch
• Responding to incidents and dev-escalations in your domain
• Building the new TypeScript system that will replace the legacy PHP platform
• Maintaining and supporting the existing PHP system throughout the transition

What You'll Do

• Feature Development
  • Take feature requests, break them into tasks, estimate, and deliver independently
  • Build the new TypeScript-based system designed to replace our existing PHP platform
  • Maintain and support the current PHP system in parallel, until the new system is fully migrated
  • Write clean, tested, production-ready code that meets team standards
  • Make technical decisions for features and explain trade-offs clearly
  • Monitor your features in production — logs, metrics, alerts
  • Leave the codebase better than you found it (refactor, document, reduce debt)
• Production Ownership & Incident Response
  • Respond to dev-escalations with urgency — investigate issues, communicate findings, contribute to resolution
  • Participate in incident response: at all levels, you are expected to show up, help investigate, and support resolution
  • L4+: Drive incident response for your domain — coordinate investigation, delegate tasks, communicate status to stakeholders, and ensure post-mortems happen
  • Write runbooks and keep documentation current as you build
  • Share on-call rotation after ramp-up period
• Code Quality & Testing
  • Write unit and integration tests as part of feature work, not as an afterthought
  • Participate actively in code reviews — give thoughtful feedback, act on feedback you receive
  • Identify edge cases and risks during planning, not after deployment
• AI-Augmented Development (Expected, Not Optional)
  • Use AI coding tools daily: code generation, debugging, test writing, exploring unfamiliar parts of the codebase, code review acceleration
  • Your output should be measurably faster because of AI tools
  • You understand everything you ship — AI is an accelerator, not a replacement for judgment
  • L3+: Help teammates develop effective AI workflows; contribute to team standards for AI tool use
  • L4+: Set team standards for AI tool usage — evaluate what delivers real value, ensure quality isn't sacrificed for speed
• Collaboration
  • Work closely with Product, Design, QA, and other engineers
  • Contribute meaningfully to sprint planning and technical discussions
  • L3+: Mentor L1/L2 engineers through code reviews, pairing, and sharing knowledge

What You Bring To This Role

• Technical Environment
  • Primary stack: TypeScript/Node.js for the new system you'll build, and PHP 7.4/8+ with Laravel for the existing system you'll maintain during the transition.
  • Infrastructure: MariaDB, Redis, AWS (EC2, RDS, CloudWatch, SQS, S3), Docker, GitHub Actions CI/CD
  • This role requires active, hands-on TypeScript experience and past professional experience with PHP. Hands-on experience integrating payment platforms such as Stripe and PayPal is required.

Expectations by Level

• L1: Works on well-scoped tickets with guidance. Learning the codebase and practices. Uses AI tools to learn faster and ship more.
• L2: Independently owns features. Minimal guidance needed on implementation. Noticeably faster because of AI tool usage.
• L3: Leads small projects. Mentors L1/L2. Improves the codebase proactively. Teaches effective AI workflows.
• L4: Technical authority for a domain. Drives cross-team projects. Sets team AI standards. Drives incident response.

Success Metrics

• Early on, you'll ship your first feature to production, understand the core architecture, and get your local development environment set up.
• From there, you'll be independently shipping features end-to-end and contributing to code reviews.
• As you grow further, you'll contribute meaningfully to technical discussions and handle dev-escalations in your area.

On-Call

• Shared rotation (~1 week/month after ramp-up).
• Critical: 15 min. High: 1 hour.

Learn More About ThriveCart

• Our Values are:
  • Commit to Excellence
  • Find a Way
  • Help Each Other
  • Keep Growing
  • Data First
• Our team and product are growing rapidly - we achieved YoY growth of 64% from 2022-2023, and we’re just getting started.
• We believe in open communication, clear goal setting, and that people do best when they have a growth mindset and want to get things done.
• Our team comes from diverse backgrounds and companies like Shopify, Salesforce, and BigCommerce, and we are running like an independent SaaS company within a PE fund.