[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Tilt

Role Description

Tilt is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our team and help us scale our business. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You’ll write code, build proofs of concept, and set the bar for how we design, build, and scale systems, leading through clarity, execution, and mentorship. This position is a full-time role reporting to our CTO.

• Strategic Partnership & Problem Shaping:
  • Partner closely with Product and Engineering leadership to identify, frame, and drive resolution of high-impact business and technical blockers.
  • Proactively surface opportunities across systems, product, and processes using data signals, domain expertise, and observed gaps.
  • Convene and lead cross-functional discussions (Product, Design, Engineering, Data) to ideate solutions, align on direction, and drive informed trade-off decisions.
  • Translate ambiguous or loosely defined problem spaces into clear technical strategies, influencing roadmap priorities and sequencing.
  • Act as a force multiplier by connecting initiatives across teams, ensuring alignment, reducing duplication, and accelerating progress toward strategic goals.
  • Shapes not only what gets built, but why and when, ensuring engineering effort is consistently aligned with business outcomes.
• Architecture & Technical Strategy:
  • Leads the evolution of system architecture (e.g., monolith-to-services) with a clear, pragmatic roadmap.
  • Designs scalable, maintainable full-stack systems with clear separation of concerns across backend services, APIs, and frontend applications.
  • Applies these principles within our current stack (Django/Python, Next.js/React) while remaining stack-agnostic in architectural thinking.
  • Drives architectural patterns (e.g., event-driven systems) that improve decoupling, extensibility, and long-term velocity.
  • Makes and communicates architectural tradeoffs, aligning technical decisions with business goals.
  • Validates direction through POCs, frameworks, and iterative adoption strategies.
• Engineering Excellence & System Quality:
  • Sets the standard for clean, maintainable, high-quality code across backend and frontend.
  • Defines and evolves best practices (API design, abstractions, performance, reliability).
  • Improves testing strategy, system design patterns, and development workflows.
  • Owns system reliability, performance, and production health.
  • Establishes strong observability practices (logging, tracing, alerting).
  • Designs for resilience (failure handling, retries, graceful degradation, distributed system challenges).
• Execution, Influence & Team Multiplication:
  • Contributes production-grade code across the stack while maintaining architectural oversight.
  • Improves team velocity and clarity through better systems, tooling, and patterns.
  • Mentors and levels up engineers through pairing, feedback, and design collaboration.
  • Leads through influence, raising the technical bar without relying on authority.
  • Creates leverage by enabling others to deliver higher-quality work more independently.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building and scaling production systems.
• Deep expertise in Python/Django and strong experience with modern frontend (React / Next.js).
• Proven experience evolving or decomposing monolithic systems into services.
• Strong understanding of system design, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Experienced with event-driven systems (Kafka, SNS/SQS, or similar).
• Strong grasp of tradeoffs in scalability, consistency, and performance.
• Ability to design systems that balance speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.
• Hands-on experience with AWS (EKS/Kubernetes, networking, IAM).
• Experience with observability tools (Datadog or equivalent).
• Familiar with resilience patterns (retries, circuit breakers, graceful degradation).
• Track record of shipping complex systems, not just reviewing them.
• High levels of empathy and can connect deeply with Tilt’s mission.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments.
• Ability to learn software quickly.
• Fearlessly flexible and curious; thrives in an environment where not all answers are known.
• Experience working with a startup and/or with a B2B SaaS business.

Benefits

• Projected annual salary range is $180,000 - $200,000 USD plus stock options (ISOs).
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits paid at 100% for all employees and 50% for dependents.
• 401k + match (100% match on the first 3%, 50% match on the next 2%).
• $50 monthly to spend on “What Matters Most”.
• Responsible Time Off - take what you need, when you need it!

Company Description

Tilt’s mission is big: make leave not suck. We are building a product that makes it easy for people to switch between work and life. If you join us, you’ll be part of a fearless band of humans helping employers balance empathy with economics. We’re changing the status quo and it’s hard.

We are a fully remote company, committed to being fearlessly flexible and ensuring that all employees are set up and have the autonomy to do their best work.

We celebrate and support our differences and believe in the power of equality, which is why we are an equal opportunity employer.