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# Staff Software Engineer-Backend

- **Company:** CAMEO SPA INC.
- **Location:** Chicago, IL, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $175,000.0 - $215,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Cloud Engineering, Cursor, Distributed Systems, Mobile Application Software, MongoDB, Node.Js, NoSQL, Software Engineering, Claude Code, Backend, Agentic-AI, Data Layers, Event Driven Architecture, Apache Kafka, Api Design, Confluent
- **Published:** November 5, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/staff-software-engineer-backend-chicago-il--260bb7e2-079d-4af1-9c90-f790efb17681

## About the Role

Software Engineering, Comedy, Startup, Insurance, Leadership, Mobile Applications, Distributed Computing, Architectural Services, MongoDB, Artificial Intelligence (AI), * 10+ years of professional backend engineering experience, with deep expertise in node.js (express, async patterns, etc.)

 * A track record of designing and operating distributed systems serving millions of users in production
 * Expert-level data modeling with NoSQL (Mongo), and good judgment on when relational or other stores fit better
 * Experience designing event-driven and streaming architectures (Kafka/Confluent, queues, pub/sub)
 * You''ve built and owned high-throughput, low-latency REST (and/or async) APIs as long-lived platforms, not one-offs
 * Security-minded across authn/authz, data protection, and supply-chain risk
 * Strong cloud-native chops on AWS
 * AI fluency: you use agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) to multiply your output, and you help set the standards for how the team builds with AI; including designing agentic and AI-powered systems into the platform
 * You set technical direction across teams and mentor engineers, leading through influence rather than authority
 * You have a strong product sense and connect technical decisions to real user and business impact
 * You''re a doer who thrives in ambiguity and brings others along with you
 * You love building and scaling, and you raise the bar for everyone around you

## Description

Come to work every day knowing your efforts will have a material impact, shaping the direction of the next outstanding tech company!

About the role:

You will set the technical direction for the backend platform that connects fans and talent to create the perfect video shoutout; and you''ll make it fast, reliable, and ready for the next order of magnitude of scale. This is a hands-on leadership role: you''ll architect the core services behind our website and mobile app, own the hardest distributed-systems and data problems, and raise the engineering bar for the teams around you.

As a staff backend engineer, you''ll go deep on our backend (node.js) and data layer (MongoDB), design the event-driven and API architecture that ties everything together, and partner closely with product, data, and platform teams. You''ll also help define how we build with AI; from using agentic coding tools to move faster, to designing the AI-powered systems that make Cameo better. You won''t just ship features; you''ll define how we build, where we invest, and how we stay reliable as we grow.