Senior Staff Engineer - Backend

Choco is on a mission to enable the global food system to become sustainable by optimizing the way food is sold, ordered, distributed, and financed. Our AI-focused software connects distributors with their customers to operate waste-free and efficiently.  A problem of this magnitude requires a massive scale and only the best people will be able to solve it. Are you in?

Here’s what we’re up to: https://bit.ly/4fyXonB

-------

No recruiters please, we have a dedicated in-house Talent team.

-------

We’re looking for a (Sr.) Staff Engineer (Backend) who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment – someone who can learn quickly, adapt to new technologies, take ownership and deliver impactful solutions. You will report directly to our VP Engineering and will be working along-side a diverse world-class team, leveraging cutting-edge technologies in a company that is an innovation driver of the industry and the broader European ecosystem.

As a (Sr.) Staff Engineer you'll be a technical leader and a strategic architect working cross-domain to design, implement, and evolve our backend systems. Your focus will be on identifying and solving complex technical challenges at scale, defining architectural patterns, and driving technical innovation while partnering with product teams and technical leaders. You'll play a crucial role in our AI initiatives by designing resilient system architectures that enable seamless integration of AI capabilities across our platform.

Beyond writing code, you'll be responsible for making high-impact technical decisions, mentoring other senior engineers, and establishing engineering best practices that influence the entire organization. Your exceptional engineering expertise will be vital in building and evolving our technical foundation to support our ambitious AI initiatives, while ensuring our systems remain scalable, maintainable, and aligned with our long-term technical vision.

Your Responsibilities:

• Architect Scalable and Resilient Backend Systems: Design, drive, and facilitate the development and adoption of our distributed systems that support high-scale applications, ensuring optimal performance, reliability, and security.

• Lead Strategic Engineering Initiatives: Own and drive high-impact technical initiatives across multiple teams, making key architectural decisions to ensure scalable and maintainable systems.

• Cloud-Native Infrastructure Development: Design and optimize cloud-first architectures leveraging AWS Serverless technologies and AWS EKS, ensuring efficient scaling, cost-effectiveness, and high availability.

• Ensure System Reliability and Enterprise Standards: Implement best practices to maintain security, compliance, scalability, and performance, meeting enterprise-grade requirements such as SLAs and big data processing.

• Drive Technical Innovation: Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and best practices, leading the adoption of innovative solutions that enhance system efficiency and reliability.

• Mentor and Develop Talent: Provide technical mentorship, fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and growth within the engineering team.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work closely with product, platform, and data teams to design and deliver solutions that address business objectives while maintaining technical excellence.

• Stakeholder Management: Act as a technical representative to internal and external stakeholders, including customers, aligning development efforts with product goals and long-term business strategies.

What We’re Looking For:

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering with deep expertise in distributed systems, microservices architecture, and cloud-native development

• In depth knowledge and expertise in designing and implementing enterprise-grade architecture solutions in production environment including security, compliance, and high availability

• Strong track record of building and scaling AWS serverless architectures in production, demonstrating deep understanding of AWS Lambda, AppSync, SQS, and cloud-native services

• Extensive hands-on experience with Node.js and TypeScript ecosystem, including NestJS framework, GraphQL, and both SQL (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (DynamoDB) databases

• Experience with large data processing technologies and monitoring solutions (Kafka, Apache Flink, ELK stack)

• Demonstrated ability to design and implement large-scale distributed systems that process millions of transactions, with a proven track record of making critical architectural decisions that positively impact engineering organizations

• Experience leading complex technical initiatives across multiple teams, mentoring senior engineers, and establishing engineering best practices at scale

• Leading product and process transformations, refactoring legacy systems, and driving architectural evolution while minimizing impact on business operations

• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with ability to influence technical decisions across teams and translate complex technical concepts for various audiences

• Self-motivated with strong analytical and problem-solving skills, thriving in fast-paced environments while balancing technical excellence with business requirements

Nice-to-Have:

• Familiarity with Frontend development particularly ReactJS stack

• Familiarity with Mobile development particularly Flutter

• Platform engineering and developer tooling experience

• Open-source contributions or technical conference speaking

Our Backend Stack:
We have a cutting-edge backend environment and use NodeJS and TypeScript in combination with the NestJS framework, GraphQL, AWS DynamoDB and PostgreSQL.

Our infrastructure is powered by various AWS serverless technologies such as SNS, SQS, Lambda, and AppSync. We are also actively investing in our containerized architecture with EKS (Kubernetes).  For infrastructure management we use AWS CDK and Helm.

Choco was founded in 2018 in Berlin. Now, we are a dedicated team of over 200 Chocorians across Europe and the US. We seek hungry and humble individuals who embrace hard work, put our team first, and are committed to building a lasting company. Our mission demands urgency and speed while maintaining a long-term vision.

In just five years, Choco has raised $328.5 million and achieved unicorn status in 2022, with a valuation of $1.2 billion. We're supported by some of the world’s best investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Coatue Management, and LeftLane Capital.

Choco is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We are committed to ensuring that our technology is available and accessible to everyone. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, religion, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.