Staff Backend Engineer

Job description

About Us At Bettermode , we are redefining how businesses streamline customer experiences and foster strong relationships. Our platform empowers businesses to seamlessly craft powerful web apps with engagement tools in its core tailored to their unique needs. Backed by Silicon Valley investors and trusted by brands like Lenovo, Mercedes, and IBM, we're proud to connect millions of end-users daily (check our Showcase page 😉). Join us as we continue building tools that redefine customer engagement! Benefits 🌟 At Bettermode, we're dedicated to empowering our team to thrive — both professionally and personally. We offer location-based, competitive compensation that reflects your expertise and impact, with annual reviews so you can grow with us. Our culture is built on ownership and trust, giving you real influence over how we scale and succeed. 🩺 From your very first day, you and your family are covered by comprehensive Canadian health benefits — dental and vision included — so you can focus on what matters most. 😎 Enjoy unlimited paid vacation days, paid parental leave to support your family, and bereavement leave should you need it. 🛠️ You'll have all the equipment you need provided, or you can bring your own device and access our Device Upgrade Policy — an interest-free hardware stipend repayable via payroll deductions, allowing you to upgrade when you need. 💡 We want you to thrive in your work: every team member receives a monthly Tech & Appreciation Stipend — perfect for testing new software or tools and improving your workflows as you see fit. 🏢 For in-person collaboration, our downtown Toronto office is less than a 15-minute walk from Union Station, with a free shuttle running throughout the day. The office features complimentary snacks, coffee, video games, and board games, as well as dedicated seating and a flexible environment that supports creativity, focus, and teamwork. 🌎 Join a globally diverse and collaborative team where you're supported to do your best work and have access to all the resources needed to succeed. About this role Employment Type: Full-time Location: Remote within Canada, or Hybrid in our Downtown Toronto office (3 days per week — Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) if you're based in the Greater Toronto Area Timezone : Eastern Standard Time The Opportunity We are looking for a Staff Backend Engineer who wants to build and own the next generation of Bettermode products. You will join a small team of seasoned developers where high autonomy and high technical standards are the default. This role is for a builder who carries a product from scrappy prototype, through real users in beta, to production-grade — same hands the whole way through. What You Will Do Operate across the stack. Lead complex backend work in TypeScript and NestJS — event-driven systems on Kafka, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, and AI pipelines — while reaching into the frontend when the problem demands it. Build AI into the product. Integrate LLMs into real customer-facing workflows. Work with nondeterministic outputs, design for trust, and ship AI features that actually work in production rather than demoing well. Raise the engineering bar. Your code reviews shape how mid-level engineers grow. Your judgment shapes what the team ships. Mentorship and review are part of the job, not stretch goals. Who We Are Looking For TypeScript Authority. Deep expertise in the TypeScript ecosystem and modern tooling. You write clean, modular code that scales and is easy to test and maintain. Product-Minded Builder. Before reaching for the keyboard, you understand who an ask is for, why it matters, and what problem they are actually trying to solve. Critically, you can spot when the request isn't the real problem to solve. Knows What to Build to Last. You can tell the difference between code that needs to survive five years and code that's a learning prototype — and you make those calls knowing you'll be the one living with them later. Today's shortcut to prove the value is built easy to throw away, so the production-grade version can replace it cleanly when it's time to scale. You don't over-engineer throwaways, and you don't cut corners on the load-bearing parts. Serious about AI. You work with Claude Code, Cursor, or a custom rig as a daily force multiplier, not just autocomplete. You've made it work on non-trivial problems and know where AI accelerates and where it actively gets in the way. High Autonomy. You thrive in a startup where requirements evolve. You take a business goal and translate it into shipped product with minimal supervision. Bonus Points Led a new product from zero. You took something with rough requirements and made the ownership-level calls — what to build, what to defer, what to abandon — to turn it into shipped product. Prior Staff-level (or equivalent) experience at a software company where you were a peer to Product and Design, not someone they handed work to. Strong product instinct, with examples. Specific times you reshaped or walked away from work because of what you learned from real customers. Experience with multi-tenant systems and the constraints they impose on every architectural decision. Why Join Bettermode? Modern Stack: Clean, scalable, TypeScript across the board. Tech debt is paid down before it bites, not after. High-Density Talent: Work alongside peers who challenge you to think deeper about architecture, customer outcomes, and product quality. Impact: Your work ships quickly, is visible to customers, and directly shapes how companies engage their own communities. Commitment to Diversity As we continue to grow with customers and team members worldwide, we are committed to cultivating an environment where everyone's unique perspectives are heard and valued. The diversity of our team will enable us to build the most inclusive product and workplace possible. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, identities, abilities, and life experiences. Additional Information Headcount : This is a new position at Bettermode. Compensation Range : 175K - 200K+ AI Use : Large Language Models (LLM) might be used in the hiring process for this position to screen, assess or select job applicants.