Staff Software Developer

BackerKit helps creators bring projects to life. For over a decade, we’ve powered some of the world’s most successful crowdfunding campaigns. We’re always building the next generation of our platform, innovating, and driving the industry forward.
We’re a remote-first team of ~40 people with a diverse, close-knit team that prizes creativity, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn. We move quickly, think deeply about our users, and care about building software that lasts. 
We’re looking for a Staff-level engineer who is deeply motivated by user experience, interaction design, and frontend craftsmanship and excited to bring that to life within a Ruby on Rails monolith. Perhaps this is you!
The role
This is a frontend and UX leadership role. You’ll work directly in Rails views using Hotwire, Turbo, Stimulus, and Tailwind to simplify complex workflows and create intuitive user experiences. 
You’ll help shape frontend patterns across the product, and turn our powerful, interconnected systems into intuitive experiences that are fast, clear, and approachable.
This role is high-context, high-collaboration, and high-impact. You’ll define patterns, raise the quality bar across the product, and influence how the entire Engineering, Product & Design team thinks about user experience. Everyone at BackerKit is customer-facing, and we expect everyone to get to know the creators and backers that we serve (plus, they are awesome, just like you!). 
How we build
We iterate quickly, ship small experiments, and learn from customers. We are a pairing shop who uses Claude Code, practices TDD, works in one-week iterations, and ships multiple times a day.
 
We are small-a agile, which means no component of our process is sacrosanct. Weekly retrospectives (among other things) help make sure that our processes evolve as we do. We value communication and shared ownership over rigid roles. As one of our most senior folks, we hope you’ll contribute thoughtfully to those discussions and experiments, bringing your unique experience to bear.
BackerKit is a Ruby on Rails “majestic monolith” deployed on Heroku. The codebase has been around since 2012. Despite that, it is relatively well-factored and well-tested -- we’ve been tending this garden for over a decade! 
We value simplicity, maintainability, communication, and shared ownership.
We’re a remote-first team working primarily 9-5 Pacific.
What you’ll do
Partner with our Director of Engineering and Staff Engineer to shape technical direction 
Lead the evolution of frontend architecture (components, rendering strategies, etc)
Translate product and design intent into elegant, maintainable UI
Simplify complex workflows and improve usability, responsiveness, and performance
Partner closely with Engineering, Product, and Design on solution development
Mentor engineers and raise the bar for frontend and UX craftsmanship
Take actual breaks and vacations - no off-hours or weekend work except when the app experiences unforeseen issues (which does not happen often)
What we’re looking for
Technical & craft
Deep experience building high-quality user interfaces, and recent hands-on coding
Strong fundamentals in HTML, CSS, JS, and browser behavior
Comfort working directly in Rails views, helpers, and partials
Experience with or strong interest in Hotwire / Turbo / Stimulus
Preference for simple, maintainable systems over unnecessary abstraction
Product & UX thinking
Strong product and interaction design instincts
Experience simplifying complex workflows
Ability to work effectively with ambiguity
Staff-level impact
Experience shaping engineering patterns and conventions
Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
Act as a go-to partner for complex or ambiguous frontend and UX challenges
Ability to zoom out to systems (architecture and business-level) thinking while remaining comfortable bushwhacking in the weeds
Most successful candidates for this role have 10+ years of software development experience working on multiple complex software projects over time, though we do not have a strict years-of-experience requirement.
This role is a great fit if you
Have deep knowledge of Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript
Care deeply about how software feels to use
Enjoy working across product, design, and backend concerns
Prefer cohesive Rails applications over fragmented frontend stacks or SPAs
Treat constraints as a creative tool
This role is likely not a fit if you
Prefer working in React, Vue, or SPA-heavy environments
Prefer fully decoupled frontend/backend architectures
Prefer long periods of solo or heads-down work
Compensation & benefits
Remote-first position on a distributed team
Competitive salary and stock option plan
Medical, dental, vision, and 401k benefits (with employer match!)
Stipends for supporting creators of your choosing
Annual Learning and Development stipend to support your professional growth
Family-friendly and focused on maintaining a healthy work/life balance
Awesome work environment at a company with a huge opportunity

Research shows that while men apply for jobs when they meet ~60% of the criteria, women and other underrepresented groups tend to only apply when they check every box. If this role excites you – even if you don’t meet every requirement – we’d love to hear from you.