Design, develop, and maintain backend services in Python and Java; lead architecture and migration from a monolith to microservices; drive engineering best practices (TDD, CI/CD, SRE); mentor engineers and collaborate with cross-functional teams to build scalable, reliable global HR platform features.
RemoFirst is transforming the way businesses hire and manage global teams. Our mission is to enable Freedom of Work by providing an all-in-one global HR platform that simplifies hiring, compliance, payroll, and benefits management. We partner with some of the world’s most innovative companies, including Fortune 500 businesses and leading startups.
We are a small but strong team of 200+ people (and growing) hyper-focused on delivering a world-class platform and unparalleled service with our industry-leading partnerships.
We are scaling at incredible speed and transforming one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. To fuel this momentum, we are looking for a Staff Back-End Engineer with strong experience in both Python and Java to help us maintain and improve our existing Python-based systems and support the design, build, and strategic transition of parts of our backend to Java. This is a hands-on role with strong technical ownership and exposure to global-scale systems. This role goes beyond simply implementing requirements - you’d be a real product engineer taking extreme ownership over the quality of your product, caring deeply about our customers and what’s being built. You will collaborate with international engineering, product, and design teams in a fully remote setup.
What hats will you wear:
- As a hands-on leader from the IC track you will design, develop, and maintain backend services using our core stack (Java/Python/SpringBoot/FastAPI/Postgres/Kafka) alongside the rest of the engineers on the squads
- As the lead engineer you will be working closely with the broader cross-functional team (Product, Design, Operations, Sales) to build reliable and delightful products that address the real pain points of businesses operating in the growing remote talent market. You need to feel comfortable working with both technical and non-technical audience, within and outside of the company
- As an architect you will be in charge of making pragmatic yet sustainable architectural discussions, choose when and how to strangle functionalities off of our legacy monolith, establish domain boundaries, and choose the appropriate distributed system patterns
- As a leader in our Engineering Community of Practice, you will play a pivotal role in our adoption of modern engineering practices - TDD, real continuous delivery, SRE culture, API-first design to enable externally available dev APIs - and master the art of refactoring to gradually introduce them without stop-the-world year-long migrations
- As a mentor you will upskill less senior engineers by writing quality code yourself, leading our weekly learning sessions, conduct quality code reviews, encourage best practices by automatic trivial controls
What You Bring:
- 8+ years of backend software development experience
- Strong professional experience with Python (Django, FastAPI, Flask, or similar frameworks)
- Strong professional experience with Java, preferably using Spring Boot
- Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs
- Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL); exposure to NoSQL databases is a plusFamiliarity with unit testing, integration testing, and test-driven development (TDD)
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git, and modern development workflows
- Deep understanding of microservices architecture and distributed systems
- Experience working with cloud platforms (AWS preferred)
- Strong problem-solving skills and attention to performance and scalability
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
Why Remofirst:
- Fully remote role
- Opportunity to work on global-scale systems and products
- Exposure to international teams and modern engineering practices
- High ownership and autonomy in a fast-growing startup environment
- A strong culture grounded in speed, ownership, trust, transparency, customer obsession, and excellence.
- Real problems, global impact, and the chance to help redefine how the world works
Remofirst San Francisco, California, USA Office
415 Mission St, San Francisco, California , United States, 94105
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