[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @EQL Tech

Role Description

As Staff Software Engineer, you will lead a squad and build alongside it. You will scope the work, set the timeline, keep your engineers unblocked — and then write the code with them. This is a hands-on staff role, not a step away from the keyboard.

• Ship end to end: take features from database schema and GraphQL resolvers through to React components and mobile screens, owning the whole vertical slice rather than a layer of it.
• Own the shared core: build and maintain the authentication, permissions, notifications and billing logic that every other surface depends on — the work that has to be right.
• Complete the mobile experience: finish and refine the React Native app, bringing it to the same standard as the web product.
• Design durable background workflows: build the scheduling, payments and integration pipelines that have to run reliably at 3am without anyone watching them.
• Lead a squad without managing it: set direction, unblock people, raise the technical bar by example — the influence comes from the work, not a title.
• Shape what gets built: work directly with product, design and marketing on the problem, not just the implementation.

The Stack: Next.js, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind and a custom Radix design system. GraphQL with Apollo. Node.js, PostgreSQL with Drizzle, Stripe, Novu and Inngest. React Native with Expo. Vercel, a Turborepo monorepo, Vitest and Playwright. Nobody is expected to arrive knowing all of it.

Qualifications

• Experienced enough to have opinions: eight or more years building production software, or six if your track record is unusually strong — you have shipped things, maintained them, and learned what you would do differently.
• Deep in TypeScript and React: strong fundamentals rather than framework trivia, and genuine comfort moving across the stack — schema, resolver, component, screen — without needing a handoff at each boundary.
• Mobile-capable or mobile-curious: React Native or Expo experience, or the appetite and aptitude to get there quickly — the mobile app is a real part of this role, not an occasional errand.
• A leader without the title: you have led a small team or a significant initiative — tech lead, founding engineer, or simply the person others gravitate toward when something hard needs doing. No management experience required.
• Fluent with AI coding agents: they are part of how you work day to day, and you have a considered sense of where they accelerate you and where they need supervision.
• Pragmatic by instinct: you ship and iterate rather than over-architect, you can tell the difference between a decision that is expensive to reverse and one that is not, and you spend your design budget accordingly.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: you can scope your own work, set your own quality bar, and make progress without waiting to be told what to do next.
• No task beneath you: shared billing logic, a flaky Playwright test, a customer bug that turns out to be a data problem — you treat the unglamorous work as the job, because at this team size it is.
• US-based and authorised to work without new sponsorship — transfers are possible. Core hours overlapping Central Time.
• Experience in the creator economy, social platforms, or content tooling is a strong plus, not a requirement.

Benefits

• Compensation: $180,000–210,000 base salary, plus equity.
• Equity in a company that already makes money: Planoly is profitable and bootstrapped, so equity here is a share of a real business rather than a lottery ticket on the next raise.
• Health, dental and vision cover.
• Remote within the US: work from wherever you are, with core hours overlapping Central Time so the team actually overlaps.
• Flexible PTO: and a team that expects you to use it.
• Annual team offsites: the whole company in one room, a few times a year's worth of context in a few days.

How They Hire

• No take-home assignments. No algorithmic whiteboarding.
• One or two technical conversations built around refactoring real code and system design — the work you would actually be doing.
• A conversation with the Head of Engineering and Chief of Staff.
• A final conversation with the Head of Product and CEO.
• Feedback within a couple of days at each stage.