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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Staff Software Engineer - **Company:** HOLLY'S INC - **Location:** New York, NY, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $202,000.0 - $262,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Code Review, Continuous Integration, PostgreSQL, Open Source Technology, Operational Databases, Next.js, Data Streaming, TypeScript, Network Routers, Pulumi, Data Ingestion, Tailwind, ReactJS, Large Language Models, Backend, Material UI, Sentry, Front End Software Development - **Published:** September 4, 2026 - **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/staff-software-engineer-product-holly-8992348 ## About the Role * Have 8+ years building and shipping production software, or equivalent experience, including sustained Staff-level scope across a product domain * Are a strong full-stack engineer: you work across both sides of the stack backend design and clean APIs, data modeling in Postgres, and modern React on the frontend * Have shipped modern React TanStack (Router, Query) and/or Next.js (App Router, server components and actions) and care about performance, DX, and maintainability * Have built AI / LLM-powered features in production agents, RAG, tool-calling, or streaming. This is central to the role; experience with the Vercel AI SDK, VoltAgent, or Mastra is ideal * Have owned systems used by customers building, operating, and improving them over time * Have built data-heavy product surfaces (search / filter / pagination) and are comfortable working with imperfect real-world data * Take ownership and move fast you work independently, ship often, and thrive in early-stage ambiguity * Have a growth mindset you learn quickly and raise the bar through code review and collaboration, * Deep experience with TanStack (Router, Query, Start) * Experience with background jobs, durable workflows, and workers at scale (Trigger.dev, Temporal, or similar) * Experience building and maintaining a design system or component library * Experience with messy data ingestion scraping, document extraction, or LLM-assisted parsing * Comfort owning reliability: monitoring, alerting, and incident response * Experience in government, public sector, or civic tech * Prior early-stage startup experience and maybe you want to be a founder someday; this is an early-team seat Don't meet every bullet? Apply anyway. If you're strong on most of this and excited about the work, we want to hear from you we'll help you ramp on the rest. ## Description We're hiring a Staff Software Engineer, Product to set technical direction across the product Holly runs on. You'll own architecture that spans the data model, backend, frontend, and AI systems, then help teams turn that direction into features local governments use every day. This is a hands-on, full-stack building role in a modern TypeScript stack: React with TanStack Start and Next.js across the frontend and backend (we prefer TanStack and are moving that way) Postgres for the data model, and the pipelines that turn messy government inputs into product experiences people can rely on. AI is central to the product: you'll build agentic and LLM-powered features with the Vercel AI SDK, VoltAgent, and similar frameworks/tools. You'll make the architecture calls, set the quality bar, and move fast without breaking the things customers depend on. You'll work directly with the founders, resolve architecture decisions that cross teams, and make other engineers more effective. If you're a Staff engineer who wants to own a product domain, de-risk the hardest decisions, and raise the engineering bar through systems and people, we'd love to talk. What You'll Do You'll own the technical health of major product domains, lead cross-team decisions, and help engineers ship features customers are actively asking for. Own and Ship Core Product * Own features end-to-end, from idea to production data model, backend, frontend, and rollout * Partner with the founders to scope work, make tradeoffs, and drive delivery * Lead high-impact projects that directly unlock customer value and revenue * Set technical direction for major initiatives tradeoffs, sequencing, and the quality bar Build Across the Full Stack Ship production features across our stack, front to back: * React with TanStack (Start, Query) our preferred stack, and where we're headed * TypeScript, end-to-end even infrastructure is via Pulumi * AI and agents LLM features, tool-calling, and agentic workflows (Vercel AI SDK, Vercel Eve, VoltAgent) * Postgres Drizzle * Background jobs and durable workflows / workers (e.g. Trigger.dev) * shadcn/ui Tailwind * Dash0, Sentry for monitoring & observability Build AI Into the Product * Build LLM-powered and agentic features retrieval, tool-calling, structured extraction, and streaming * Work in our AI stack and set the patterns for how we build AI at Holly * Make AI features dependable: evaluation, guardrails, and handling non-deterministic model output Build Data-Rich Product Experiences * Design pipelines that ingest, validate, and normalize messy government workforce data * Build fast, usable interfaces over large datasets search, filter, and performance-minded rendering Turn imperfect real-world inputs into product surfaces people trust Raise the Engineering Bar * Set strong defaults through code review, reliability and monitoring, and CI/CD * Establish pragmatic standards that keep us shipping fast without breaking things testing where it matters, clean interfaces, docs, * Work on What Matters, Default to No every yes has a cost, so we save them for what moves the business and spend time on what matters. * Question Everything, Be Opinionated titles don't settle arguments, the better case wins. Feel empowered to push back to everyone from the Head of Engineering to one of the founders. * Obsess Over Craft quality first, and we don't trade it for a date. If you wouldn't put your name on it, it shouldn'''t end up in the codebase. * Own It End to End if you build it, you own it: to production, in tests, and when it breaks. With great power comes great responsibility, with autonomy comes responsibility to make sure you own your work. * Ship Small, Ship Often the smallest thing that stands on its own, kept reversible. Small ships compound, are easier to review and easier to fix if there are issues. * Automate the Hurt, Not the Itch automate the recurring pain, the Toil aka things you do repeatedly that waste time, not the one-off annoyances or what seems ''"fun''" to automate. What You'll Have We'd love to talk if you're a Staff product engineer who has owned a product domain across teams and can turn ambiguous company problems into clear technical direction., * Foundational ownership. Architect and build core systems that will define our product and data model for years. * Commitment to Open Source. We are big believers in supporting open source, and provide a monthly day of Open Source where you can work on your favorite tool. In addition to internal hackathons and other projects * Technical influence. Make the high-leverage calls on architecture, standards, and how we scale. * Founder-level access. Work directly with the founders, with autonomy to drive major initiatives end-to-end. * High-impact scope. Ship features customers urgently need and see them used in production quickly. * Public-service impact. Your work improves how local governments operate, helping millions of Americans access public-service careers. ## Related Videos - [Why segmenting your infrastructure into tiers makes your infrastructure design better](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1960-why-segmenting-your-infrastructure-into-tiers-makes-your-infrastructure-design-better) - [From Doubt to Confidence: How Sentry Uses Verdaccio to Bulletproof SDK Releases](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/739-from-doubt-to-confidence-how-sentry-uses-verdaccio-to-bulletproof-sdk-releases) - [Developing the Backend with Stefan Lingler, CTO at Shpock](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100360-developing-the-backend-with-stefan-lingler-cto-at-shpock) - [Shipping Faster with Less: Render on Cloud Hosting, AI Workloads, and the Future of DevOps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1894-shipping-faster-with-less-render-on-cloud-hosting-ai-workloads-and-the-future-of-devops) - [Meet Your New BFF: Backend to Frontend without the Duct Tape](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/682-meet-your-new-bff-backend-to-frontend-without-the-duct-tape) - [Debugging in the Dark](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1658-debugging-in-the-dark) ## Related Articles - [Dev Digest 120 - Apple and peers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/455-dev-digest-120-apple-and-peers) - [Dev Digest 121 - AI goes offline](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/456-dev-digest-121-ai-goes-offline) - [Is Software Engineering Over-Saturated?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/418-is-software-engineering-over-saturated) - [Fully Remote Software Engineer Jobs](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/447-fully-remote-software-engineer-jobs) - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [Find a Developer Job: 12 Best Job Sites For Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/165-find-a-developer-job-12-best-job-sites-for-developers)