Staff Backend Engineer

The Role: How You'll Make an Impact

Team: Backend Engineering | Reports to: Director, Backend & DevOps | Location: Remote-friendly (US/Canada, PST hours)

You'll own the architecture, delivery, and reliability of the backend behind Hatch's mobile apps and IoT devices. That means Java and Python REST APIs, AWS IoT, Lambda, and the monitoring, alerting, and DevOps practices that keep millions of devices humming in real homes.

You’re a great fit if you thrive in environments of rapid learning and delivery.  You’re self-motivated and have demonstrated strong ownership and self-direction.  You strive to understand the business of what we are trying to accomplish and push engineering solutions to provide customer value.  As a small team where AI-assisted development is core to how we work, we expect this senior role to ramp up quickly, use AI fluently in their day-to-day, and deliver broadly across our backend systems.

Working across Mobile, Embedded, and Product, you'll lead system design, set technical direction, and mentor engineers. It's a uniquely end-to-end role—cloud APIs on one side, physical devices on the other.

What You'll Do

First 90 Days: Learn & Contribute

• Dig into our backend architecture and tools through both team walkthroughs and your own deep exploration, and come back with clear observations
• Learn what drives the business and bring sharp judgement to what we prioritize
• Own and ship a high-impact backend project end-to-end in our Spring Boot + Hibernate stack, using AI fluently to accelerate delivery
• Proactively engage in and contribute to architecture conversations and cross-team design
• Build strong working relationships with peers across Mobile, Embedded, and Product

First 6 Months: Drive Real Impact

• Thoroughly understand the end-to-end flow of the entire backend architecture and the interactions with the app and device firmware
• Propose and lead architecture or refactor projects that improve system scalability and reliability.  Self-identify and drive the resolution of troubleshooting issues. 
• Own a core area like IoT device communication, registration/auth flows, device routine scheduling, or backend support for mobile app features
• Improve observability using Graphite, ELK, or other internal monitoring tools
• Mentor teammates and model pragmatic, high-quality engineering decisions

First Year: Transform & Scale

• Lead the design and rollout of new backend systems or large-scale refactors
• Own and drive backend improvements that elevate reliability, scalability, and developer experience
• Build reusable libraries, templates, and patterns that increase engineering consistency

What You'll Bring

The Essentials 

• 8+ years of experience in backend engineering, with deep expertise in Java (11+) and Spring Boot.  Familiarity and experience with Groovy.  Experience with Python backend services.
• Track record of designing and building scalable, RESTful JSON APIs.
• Technical skills: Distributed Systems, Java, Groovy, Python, AWS, MySQL, Infra and Monitoring Tools (Ansible, Jenkins, ELK. Graphite, Docker, etc.)
• Automate, Automate, Automate: You know how to write automated tests and can explain how and where to use them (and not). You believe in Continuous Deployment and understand testing's crucial role.
• Desire for elegance and simplicity: Your code should be so powerful, and so simple, that you have little work to do.  "Do the simplest thing that can possibly work" is not just a slogan here; it's a way of life.
• Judgement and Humility: You’re self-aware enough to know you’re going down a rabbit hole and when to raise concerns.  You know that asking for help is not a sign of weakness but rather a strength.

Unafraid of new, unknown tech: You dive into new tech and paradigms that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with eager glee.  You’ve picked up multiple languages over your career and stay curious about new tools, frameworks, and technologies.

• Collaborative spirit: You make everyone around you better 
• Clear communication: You can explain complex things simply

Bonus Points • Ansible-based DevOps pipelines • Connected Hardware Experience • MQTT

The Mindset We Love 

• Customer mindset: You stay laser-focused on driving value for our customers
• Builder mentality: You thrive in a rapid growth environment just on the edge of chaos
• Humans over Process: We prioritize face to face resolution rather than async processes that drag on
• Pick Up a Shovel 🌿 (you help where needed - even out of your area of expertise)
• Feedback is a Gift 🎁 (you have experience gracefully receiving and giving feedback)
• Learn Faster 👟 (ship small features iteratively, learn, and commit to the next step)

🚀 How We Work: Customer-Obsessed Culture

We're pioneering how modern teams build with a customer focus:

• Tools that amplify you: Access to best-in-class product analytics, feedback loops, and rapid prototyping tools.
• Time to explore: Dedicated time for deep-dives into customer pain points and experimentation with solutions.
• Write less boilerplate: Spend your time shipping high-impact, customer-facing features, not writing repetitive code.
• Continuous learning: Regular cross-functional workshops, customer interview shadowing, and "wow, look what we built for them" moments.

The result? You'll do the best work of your career, faster than you thought possible.