Staff Backend Engineer

Summary

Join Short Story, an award-winning tech-powered retailer, as one of the first 5 engineers. This high-impact role allows you to shape the company's tech ecosystem, working on internal and customer-facing platforms. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to build robust order and customer handling systems, own core infrastructure components, and contribute to system architecture. You will design, build, and maintain scalable backend services in Python, write clean and well-documented code, and ensure system reliability and performance. Help establish engineering guidelines and backend best practices. This is a unique opportunity to work in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment and solve complex problems.

Requirements

• You have back-end development experience and have built and scaled complex systems end-to-end
• You’re fluent in Python and have shipped production systems using frameworks like Flask, Falcon, and/or FastAPI
• You’ve worked with containerized services in Kubernetes and are confident deploying to cloud platforms like AWS
• You have strong experience with relational databases like Postgres and know how to write efficient, scalable SQL
• You’ve led backend architecture decisions and can identify when to optimize, refactor, or replatform
• You’re experienced with CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability tools to keep systems healthy
• You’ve built and maintained robust test suites using Pytest (or similar frameworks) and care about reliability
• You’ve designed APIs that are clean, consistent, and built to last
• You know your way around queue-based or event-driven architectures and can design systems for scale
• You’re thoughtful about documentation, communication, and mentoring others
• You thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and enjoy owning complex problems from idea to execution
• You’re excited by ambiguity and love solving complex problems from end to end

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services in Python (Flask, Falcon, or FastAPI)
• Write clean, well-documented, and well-tested code using Pytest and modern API patterns
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement robust order and customer handling systems
• Own core infrastructure components across AWS, Postgres, and Kubernetes
• Deploy and monitor services using CI/CD best practices and observability tools
• Contribute to system architecture and play a key role in tech design decisions
• Ensure reliability and performance across systems that handle logistics, personalization, and customer interactions
• Help establish engineering guidelines and backend best practices

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in professional back-end development
• Experience working in a fast-moving startup environment
• Experience integrating/building component systems and libraries for large codebases
• Have worked on sprint-based teams
• Have experience working remotely with timezone differences
• Have led or built a back-end engineering team before
• Have contributed to open-source or have a strong portfolio of personal project

Benefits

• 4 weeks vacation (20 days)
• Medical & dental benefits
• Fully remote work with optional office access in San Francisco and Toronto
• Ownership and autonomy in a fast-growing, mission-driven company