Staff Software Engineer

2 x Senior and Staff Backend Engineer Roles | NYC | $180k-$240k + Equity

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I’m working with two fast-growing Series B technology companies in New York, both looking for genuinely strong Senior and Staff-level backend engineers.

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The businesses are very different, but the engineering bar is similar: complex backend systems, significant architecture ownership, strong judgement and engineers who still want to write production code.

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One is building the next generation of a travel and hospitality booking/distribution platform.

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The other is building an AI-powered healthcare claims platform processing complex data and workflows for US health plans.

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Both are serious hands-on Staff IC roles.

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Role 1 — Travel / Marketplace / Transactional Systems 🌎

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You’d be joining a growing travel technology business working with thousands of hotels and building out the infrastructure behind its booking and distribution platform.

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The work includes:

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• Booking, reservation, payment and inventory systems
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• External APIs and major partner integrations
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• Transactional correctness, retries, idempotency and reconciliation
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• Complex relational data modelling
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• Distributed systems and production reliability
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• Owning architecture across a major backend domain
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• Setting patterns and technical direction for other engineers
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• Remaining hands-on with production code
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They’re particularly interested in engineers from payments, marketplaces, commerce, travel, bookings, orders or other correctness-sensitive environments.

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Exact language isn’t important. Strong engineering judgement is.

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You do not need to already hold a Staff title if you’re clearly operating at that level.

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Role 2 — AI / Healthtech / Data Platforms 🤖

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The second company is building an AI-powered claims operations platform for the US healthcare market.

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This role is heavily focused on:

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• Backend architecture
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• Large-scale data processing
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• APIs and distributed workflows
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• Complex relational data models
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• AI / LLM-enabled systems
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• RAG, agentic workflows and modern AI infrastructure
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• Reliability, observability and auditability
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• Cross-team architecture and technical direction
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• Mentoring and influencing experienced engineers
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They’re especially interested in engineers with backgrounds across high-growth technology, healthcare, fintech, data platforms or AI-heavy products.

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For this one, they’re looking for someone with 10+ years of engineering experience and genuine formal Staff-level experience.

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What both companies want ✅

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• Deep backend engineering experience
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• Strong architecture and system-design judgement
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• Experience owning difficult production systems
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• Excellent API and relational data-modelling fundamentals
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• Evidence that your technical decisions influence engineers beyond your own tickets
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• Someone comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
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• Strong communication — you need to explain why you made a decision, what alternatives you considered and what trade-offs you accepted
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• Hands-on engineers who still enjoy building rather than moving entirely into management
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• Strong use of modern AI-assisted engineering tools is increasingly valuable
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Why these are interesting 👀

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These aren’t Staff roles where you sit above the engineering team drawing diagrams.

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Both companies want people who can:

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design it → make the decision → explain the trade-off → build it → get it into production → make the wider team better.

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📍 Manhattan, NYC

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🏢 3–4 days per week in office

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💰 $180k-$240k base + equity

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👨 💻 Staff-level individual contributor

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🚀 Series B / high-growth environments

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❌ No visa sponsorship

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If you’re a Staff, Principal, Lead or exceptionally strong Senior Backend Engineer looking for serious technical ownership without moving away from coding, drop me a message.

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jacob@refactorrecruitment.com