Staff Backend Engineer

Who we are:

Stay AI is powered by savvy DTC industry vets who have each been building subscription programs for over ten years. We’ve worked with 300+ subscription-focused CPG brands that have generated hundreds of millions in subscription revenue. Our product is shaped by lifelong marketers who specialize in acquisition and retention—and it shows.

We are backed by incredible investors including Telescope Partners, Boulder Food Group, Riverpark Ventures, Vanterra Capital, and Watchfire Ventures, alongside industry leaders like Nik Sharma (Sharma Brands) and Adam Turner (Postscript).

We’re building the foundational infrastructure that powers subscription for modern commerce brands. That means deep, thoughtful integrations with Shopify — not just consuming APIs, but building durable, scalable platform systems on top of them.

If building critical infrastructure at the intersection of platform engineering and commerce excites you, keep reading.

Our culture:

We are dedicated to our craft and equally committed to celebrating our wins. Collaboration is core to how we operate — we believe strong engineering comes from strong alignment across Eng, Product, and Design.

We are remote-first, but we invest in real connection through annual offsites in places like Park City and Mexico. We move fast, we care deeply about quality, and we expect engineers to own outcomes — not just tickets.

Who you are:

As a Staff Backend Engineer at Stay AI, you will architect and build the core systems that ensure Stay operates seamlessly within Shopify’s ecosystem to serve hundreds of subscription brands and millions of subscribers. You’re excited to work closely with cross-functional teams to bring our industry-leading features to life, including the AI features that keep Stay ahead of the competition. As a seasoned technical leader, you will have the opportunity to set the standards for how we integrate with Shopify and transform the future of subscription management.

In a typical day, you might:

• Redesign the webhook processing architecture to support 10x growth.

• Architect a new abstraction layer that decouples internal subscription models from Shopify order primitives.

• Lead a technical deep-dive on Shopify GraphQL bulk operations and performance tradeoffs.

• Write an RFC defining the next generation of Stay’s integration framework.

• Review critical infrastructure PRs and guide engineers on distributed systems design.

• Implement new APIs and services to unlock the next generation of subscription management and analytics features for merchants.

• Design and develop internal tooling when you see opportunities to better enable yourself and other engineers.

• Collaborate with your teammates on Eng, Design and Product Management to plan and execute on new projects.

What You’ll Bring:

• 6+ years of experience developing large-scale, resilient services with well-defined APIs that interact with synchronous and asynchronous data processing pipelines.

• Experience defining API schemas and working with REST APIs to communicate with the server

• Experience with AWS (Kubernetes, SQS, Postgres, RDS), including the application of security best practices.

• Experience leveraging AI tools to improve productivity and quality.

• Ability to thrive in a dynamic startup environment, demonstrating adaptability, curiosity, and a willingness to take initiative.

• A deep passion for crafting delightful experiences and learning new skills.

• Excellent problem solving skills and the ability to effectively communicate complex concepts across cross-functional teams.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience working with Snowflake and dbt on high-volume data pipelines.

• Experience with Nest.js and Kubernetes and supporting highly available and reliable cloud based services.

• Team lead or manager experience.

• Fullstack React experience. While this is a backend role, understanding how the frontend works is always a plus.

• Experience working with the Shopify platform and APIs, especially around subscription or recurring payments.

Why Join Us?

• Make a meaningful impact at a high-growth startup

• Work alongside exceptional Stayers who value rigor and velocity as well as serious fun

• Solve complex, high-leverage problems that power hundreds of subscription brands

• Learn from veteran platform engineers while solving complex, high-impact problems