Principal Backend Engineer

The Principal Backend Engineer is a technical leader within a team of designers, product managers, and other software engineers. This role requires deep technical knowledge and experience in building SaaS platforms. Your focus will be on developing APIs, scaling microservices, and building our cloud infrastructure. You will help shape the culture of Knapsack's product team by modeling a culture of quality and mentoring others. This role collaborates with the Head of Product and the Principal Front-End Software Engineer to help ensure we build a great product that people love to use.

Objectives of your role:

• Work in tandem with the product team to define goals, roadmaps, and delivery dates for Knapsack and related products
• Deliver code, tests, documentation and other work related to building software products
• Ensure software quality and standards scale to meet the needs of a growing business
• Lead efforts to define, scale and improve infrastructure, APIs and services used to power Knapsack
• Guide, shape, and support the corporate strategic vision and day-to-day operations as a member of the core product team

Experience profile:

• Built and maintained microservices architecture for an enterprise SaaS application with multi-tenant environments
• Written server code for frontend applications demanding scalability or availability requirements
• Exceptional JavaScript / Node.js skills
• Comfortable working with PostgreSQL and GraphQL
• Deep understanding of database architecture and data modeling
• Worked on and scaled complex web applications, including experience in data aggregation, caching, and managing / deploying multiple environments
• Familiar with the modern services architecture, including technologies like Kubernetes, Docker, webhooks, serverless, Hasura, etc.
• Worked as a technical leader within an enterprise software product team
• Been responsible for making technology decisions that impact / influence engineering teams
• Proven ability to mentor other engineers

Core competencies:

• Organization, prioritization, and planning skills
• Able to effectively break down complex and technical subjects into clear and concise communication
• Collaborative and able to work within a cross-functional team
• Systems thinker that troubleshoots and resolves issues within code/architecture and understands the impact on the product/team
• Values feedback and transparency
• Curious and creative thinker
• Understanding of the value of systems and modularity

Why you'll love it here:

• Remote working environment — work from wherever you want
• We provide whatever tools you need to do great work
• 100% of monthly health premiums covered
• Unlimited paid vacation
• 401K plan
• Education and professional development opportunities
• Wellness benefits

About Knapsack:

At Knapsack, everything we do is steeped in the principles and practices of modularity, reusability, and component-driven software design and development. We dig into every opportunity, every challenge, every conversation with our core values top of mind:

Transparency: Operate with openness, communication, and accountability

Mindfulness: Make specific and intentional choices, and be present in the moment

Solution-minded: Appreciate challenges and work together to solve them, iterate often

Co-ownership: Use our voices, drive, and experiences to find ways to improve

Everyone Matters: Diverse opinions and perspectives lead to better outcomes

If you share this vision, we'd love to work with you at Knapsack. Knapsack is an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

Before you apply, please check if any restrictions apply in terms of time zone or country.

This job has a geo-restriction in place: USA Only.