Staff Backend Engineer

About the position

This is a hybrid role based in our Chicago or Bay Area Offices (San Francisco or Palo Alto) and will require you to be in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our team is growing because our user base is growing (30% in the last year!) which means we need you! We're looking for an experienced Backend Engineer who is passionate about building, testing, deploying, and working closely with the Product team to deliver new features. You will have the opportunity to solve challenging problems, work with the latest systems, collaborate with a kind and capable team, and contribute meaningfully.

Responsibilities

• Leading projects and other engineers to implement new features and coordinate closely with the product and design teams
• Own the design and development of Grindr's backend services in a stable and scalable microservices architecture
• Work with Product Managers, Designers, and other Engineers to refine feature design and functionality
• Optimize key pieces of Grindr's platform using tools like Redis, Postgres, and Kafka on AWS services
• Innovate by guiding data-driven decisions to adopt new technologies, architectures, and workflow
• Maintain high availability of the Grindr platform by leveraging distributed systems and infrastructure engineering, while playing a key role in optimizations, cost reduction, and incident management
• Help guide and mentor team members through pairing sessions, code reviews, and architecture reviews.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience as a Software Engineer developing critical portions of working on Backend Systems (Service APIs, Data Processing, Messaging Services)
• Experience designing and implementing large-scale API systems for high load and data consistency in a microservice-based architecture
• Experience designing systems that make heavy and efficient use of Cloud Service, AWS preferred
• Passionate about testing software and systems
• Deep understanding of concurrency concepts and trade-offs
• Experience with the JVM and at least one JVM language such as Java, Kotlin, and Scala
• Experience designing and productionizing large-scale distributed systems

Nice-to-haves

• Experience developing Production systems using Kotlin and Kafka
• Experience in mentoring / skilling up less experienced developers

Benefits

• Insurance premium coverage for health, dental, and vision for you and partial coverage for your dependents
• Generous 401K plan with 6% match and immediate vest in the U.S.
• Industry-competitive compensation and eligibility for company bonus and equity programs
• Industry-leading gender-affirming offerings with up to 90% cost coverage, access to Included Health, monthly stipends for HRT, and more
• Flexible vacation policy
• Monthly stipends for cell phone, internet, wellness, food, and commuting
• Breakfast/lunch provided onsite
• Yearly travel & leisure stipend