Full-Stack Staff Engineer
- Company
- A queer- and feminist-led astrology company
- Location
- United States, United Kingdom, or Canada
- Work arrangement
- Fully remote
- Employment type
- Full-time, 32 hours per week
- Compensation
- $190,000 base salary, plus $10,000 in annual stipends
Email your resume or LinkedIn profile and a short note about your interest in the role.
About the company
Relio is partnering with a queer- and feminist-led astrology company to hire a Full-Stack Staff Engineer.
The company builds digital products rooted in astrology and is on a mission to help people live with greater purpose. Its product serves more than 500,000 users, and astrology is central to both the experience and the company’s mission.
This opportunity is especially well suited to someone who has a genuine interest in astrology. You do not need to be a practicing astrologer, but an understanding of planets, signs, houses, and how they relate to one another is a meaningful advantage. An exceptional Staff Engineer who is also a practicing astrologer would be especially compelling.
This is a small team operating at significant scale. Engineers often help define the problem while solving it, and the person joining will have meaningful ownership across major areas of the company’s software ecosystem.
About the role
The Full-Stack Staff Engineer will serve as a technical owner across major products, projects, and systems while remaining meaningfully hands-on in the codebase.
Working closely with product, design, astrology, and engineering, you will translate product goals and business needs into technical strategy, architecture, roadmaps, and executable plans. You will own complex initiatives from early product exploration through implementation, launch, and continued iteration.
This role is responsible for:
- Owning the technical direction and execution of major projects and systems
- Creating technical roadmaps that translate product goals into clear, sequenced engineering work
- Designing technical solutions and breaking complex architecture into appropriately scoped projects, milestones, and actionable tickets
- Leading architectural decisions with performance, security, reliability, observability, and scale in mind
- Documenting important decisions, including technical tradeoffs, dependencies, risks, and opportunities
- Designing, developing, testing, and maintaining full-stack applications for a large production user base
- Taking ownership of complex technical problems whose requirements or solutions may not initially be clear
- Anticipating technical risks and helping the team make informed decisions about scope and sequencing
- Identifying patterns across projects and addressing systemic issues rather than repeatedly solving them at the feature level
- Improving the systems, tooling, and engineering practices that help the entire team work effectively
- Providing technical context and direction while preserving room for collaboration and individual judgment
- Mentoring engineers through documentation, code review, pairing, knowledge sharing, and technical guidance
- Partnering effectively with both technical and nontechnical stakeholders
What we’re looking for
Experience
- 10 or more years of professional software engineering experience
- Ideally, two to three or more years operating at the Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Technical Lead, or equivalent level
- Demonstrated ownership of complex products or systems from conception through production
- Experience leading technically complex projects without relying on formal managerial authority
- Recent startup or small-team experience is preferred
We care more about the scope and substance of your work than your exact title. If you have been operating at Staff level without formally holding the title, we still encourage you to apply.
Technical background
- Extensive professional experience with TypeScript and JavaScript
- Experience with PostgreSQL and strong knowledge of SQL database design and management
- Experience with modern frameworks and technologies, including React Native, Next.js, and Node.js
- Experience developing with AWS or Google Cloud
- Strong knowledge of software design principles and engineering best practices
- Strong systems-design skills across interconnected applications and services
- Experience designing production systems for reliability, observability, performance, security, and scale
- The ability to reason across the full stack and understand how decisions in one part of a system affect another
- Excellent technical judgment when there is no obvious answer
Collaboration and work style
- The ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly to both technical and nontechnical collaborators
- Experience translating subject-matter expertise, business needs, and product ideas into thoughtful technical solutions
- Comfort working through ambiguity with a bias toward action and refinement
- A collaborative, low-ego approach to technical leadership
- The ability to challenge assumptions, receive feedback, change direction, and help a team reach stronger decisions together
- Willingness to participate in weekly meetings scheduled between 12 and 5 p.m. Eastern Time
Astrology and domain experience
The following are strong preferences and meaningful differentiators rather than strict requirements:
- Knowledge of astrology and an interest in building technology rooted in astrological concepts
- An understanding of planets, signs, houses, and how to reason about planets in signs and houses
- Experience translating complex bodies of knowledge, rules, or symbolic systems into software
- Experience as a practicing astrologer
You do not need to be an astrologer to be considered. Genuine interest, existing knowledge, and enthusiasm for learning are all meaningful.
Engineering environment
The engineering team works in a no-AI coding environment. Candidates must be comfortable designing, writing, reviewing, and debugging code without using generative AI coding tools.
Compensation and benefits
- $190,000 base salary
- $10,000 in additional annual stipends
- A four-day, 32-hour workweek
- Seven weeks of paid company closures each year
- Fully covered health, dental, and vision insurance
- A 401(k) with a 5% company match
- Six months of paid parental leave
- Unlimited, flexible paid vacation, subject to approval
- A vacation stipend
- Paid and protected leave related to gender-based violence
- Unlimited menstrual leave for people with uteruses
- An annual technology stipend
- A personal and professional development stipend
- A stipend designed to help employees build wealth
- A flexible work-from-home policy
The company does not currently accept counteroffers to the stated base salary. There is room for salary growth within the first year of employment.
Commitment to inclusion
People who are queer, trans, nonbinary, Black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, parents, immigrants, system-impacted, have experienced systemic oppression, or have experienced gender-based violence are strongly encouraged to apply.
Location and travel
This position is fully remote and open to candidates based in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada.
Candidates must be willing to travel to New York or Los Angeles one to three times per year.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The company is looking to fill the role immediately.
Email your resume or LinkedIn profile and a short note about your interest in the role.