Staff Software Engineer - Core Architecture
Owner
Software Engineering, IT
United States · Canada · Remote
USD 240k-250k / year + Equity
About Owner
Owner is the AI-native system local business owners use to succeed, starting with restaurants.
We’re building the system that replaces the many tools owners use to run their business.
It powers everything from the restaurant’s website, online ordering, CRM, POS, and more.
Product philosophy
Most small business software makes owners do the work to get what they want: sales growth and profit growth. Owner does the work for them agentically.
Our system drives demand, converts it, and helps operators run their business day to day. As it improves, the business improves with it.
Using Owner should feel like having a team of great operators, engineers, and marketers working for you.
Our vision
We’re starting by helping independent restaurants succeed online.
But it’s not just restaurants that need our help. Most local businesses are struggling with these same problems. Huge technology corporations are taking their customers, bleeding their profits, and making it hard for them to survive.
Once we nail the solution for restaurants – we’ll scale it into every other local business type.
In the future we envision, tens of millions of local business owners will use our technology to succeed in the digital age.
Our traction
Since 2020, we've generated tens of millions in revenue and processed over half a billion dollars of online orders. 1 in 5 Americans have used an Owner.com website.
More importantly, we’ve helped over 20,000 restaurant owners, and saved them nearly $200 million in fees.
Our team
Our team is now in the low hundreds. We’ve got top talent from the most successful companies in SMB software, including: Shopify, HubSpot, DoorDash, ServiceTitan, Rappi, Faire and Stripe.
We’ll be scaling even faster in 2026 to keep pace with our customer growth.
Where we work
Owner is a remote-first, global company headquartered in San Francisco, with a sales hub in Toronto. For a few of our roles we prioritize in-person collaboration at one of our office locations. Most of our teammates are distributed throughout the globe. Please review the role description and discuss with your recruiter for more details on location!
Why we’re looking for you
We are looking for a mission-driven Staff engineer who is passionate about their craft and committed to building incredible products for our customers.
This role is 100% remote and can be based anywhere in the United States or Canada. For San Francisco-based candidates: we have a new HQ in the Presidio for optional in-person collaboration opportunities!
Our Tech Stack
The Impact You'll Have
We’re seeking a Staff Engineer to join our Core Architecture Team, a small, senior group of engineers responsible for solving the hardest technical problems across the platform.
This is a deeply hands-on role. You will spend a significant portion of your time designing, building, and shipping production code in the most critical parts of our system, while also providing architectural leadership across teams. This is not an ivory-tower architect position — success in this role requires comfort operating directly in complex codebases, debugging real production issues, and owning end-to-end execution of high-risk technical initiatives.
You’ll work on initiatives such as:
Safely decomposing our monolithic backend, writing and owning the new systems that replace it
Redesigning distributed authentication and authorization systems, including implementation and rollout
Architecting and building for 100× platform scale, with hands-on ownership of performance, reliability, and cost
Building an AI-powered "Software Factory" — a multi-agent system that takes engineering tasks from ticket to PR, orchestrated via Temporal, Slack, and sandboxed Kubernetes dev environments
Pioneering practical AI-assisted development — dynamic tool curation, multi-channel human-in-the-loop workflows, and "fast-fail" guardrails that know when to hand back to a human
Setting technical direction by doing the work, not just reviewing it
Driving engineering standards, tooling, and fundamentals across teams
Mentoring technical leaders and influencing the engineering direction of the company
What You’ll Do
Hands-On Engineering
Design, implement, and maintain core backend systems that are foundational to the platform
Write production code in high-impact areas, including services, shared libraries, infrastructure, and tooling
Define the security boundary for autonomous agents — user identity propagation, task-scoped tool access via a centralized Tool Shed, and sandboxing to limit blast radius
Lead the execution of technically complex projects end-to-end, from design through rollout and iteration
Debug and resolve hard production problems involving scale, data consistency, performance, and reliability
Architecture & Technical Leadership
Drive architectural decisions through prototypes, code, and real implementations, not just diagrams
Establish patterns and best practices for service boundaries, APIs, data ownership, and distributed systems
Partner with engineering teams to guide major refactors and platform migrations
Make pragmatic technical trade-offs that balance velocity, quality, and long-term maintainability
Execution at Scale
Partner with product, engineering, and platform teams to execute technically complex projects
Make high-leverage architectural decisions under uncertainty, with clear trade-offs
Turn vague problems into clear technical strategies and execution plans
Mentorship & Influence
Raise the technical bar through deep code reviews, design discussions, and hands-on collaboration
Mentor senior engineers and help grow future technical leaders
Influence engineering direction by being a trusted technical partner who ships high-quality systems
What We're Looking For
Must Haves
8+ years of professional software engineering experience at high-growth startups or large scale platforms
Demonstrated experience leading architectural design for large, distributed systems
Experience breaking down monoliths into service-oriented architectures or microservices
Deep expertise in scaling backend systems to handle high throughput and complex operational concerns
Strong understanding of auth systems, security boundary design, and distributed identity
Clear decision-making in ambiguous technical situations
Excellent communicator — able to articulate trade-offs to engineers and cross-functional partners
Nice to Have
Experience with TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, MongoDB, Postgres (our main stack)
Experience building or owning engineering standards and platform foundations
Previous roles as a principal, staff, or distinguished engineer
Pay and Benefits
The estimated starting base salary range for this role is $240K-250K depending on level, location and experience, plus a generous pre-IPO equity package
Other benefits include comprehensive health coverage, work from anywhere (remote-first workplace), unlimited PTO - plus extra fun perks!
Notice - Employment Scams
Communication from our team regarding job opportunities will only be made by an Owner team member with an @owner.com email address.
We do not conduct interviews over email or chat platforms, and we will never ask you to provide personal or financial information such as your mailing address, social security number, credit card numbers or banking information. If you believe you are being contacted by a scammer, please mark the communication as "phishing" or “spam” and do not respond.