Staff Software Engineer

Forward Financing is a financial technology company based in Boston, Massachusetts, focused on unlocking capital for small businesses across America. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design and implementation of complex systems, particularly in frontend development, while mentoring engineers and promoting best practices within the engineering team.

Responsibilities:

• Architectural Influence: Lead the design and implementation of significant, cross-functional systems that require technical alignment across multiple engineering teams. They also have significant expertise in designing and implementing complex systems across multiple software applications and/or languages
• Technical Leadership: As a lead engineer for their domain, this Staff Engineer sets the technical direction and raises the bar for code quality, design patterns, and operational excellence. They are a subject matter expert on the frontend software ecosystem, actively promoting architectural integrity and technical best practices, and serving as a long-term visionary who can drive change and directionally shape the frontend architecture
• Cross-Team Collaboration: The Staff Engineer leads complex, cross-team initiatives and maintains a high level of engagement across multiple teams. This includes ensuring timely resolution of technical challenges and addressing technical debt
• Mentorship and Elevation: This role improves the quality and efficiency of the engineering team through technical guidance, mentorship, and sponsorship. They act as a mentor for junior engineers, instilling best practices and raising the bar
• Problem-Solving: The Staff Engineer is instrumental in addressing technical debt and promptly resolving incidents and bugs

Requirements:

• Typically has 8+ years of experience in technical leadership, mentorship, and sponsorship
• Has deep expertise in designing and implementing frontend systems and scalable architectures across multiple software applications and/or languages
• Has a significant ability to influence others
• Possesses a full-stack perspective or experience with front-end architecture, with an understanding of how backend services impact the end-user experience
• Typically has a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or additional relevant experience
• Typically has several years of experience in agile software development
• Modern React & TypeScript at scale: Years of production experience with React and TypeScript in long-lived codebases
• State & data architecture: Deep familiarity with current server-state and client-state patterns and a clear point of view on where each belongs
• Design system stewardship: Has owned or meaningfully shaped a shared component library — comfortable with primitive-based foundations, composition-first component APIs, and Storybook-driven development
• Design partnership & craft: Reads Figma fluently, collaborates closely on designs, and cares about the loading, empty, and error states that define polished products
• Accessibility as a baseline: Fluent in WCAG 2.1 AA, keyboard and focus management, and ARIA semantics
• Full-stack capability: Holds their own across the stack — can design API contracts with backend partners, read and ship backend changes when the work crosses service boundaries, and reason about how data shape, latency, and auth choices flow through to the end-user experience
• Performance & observability: Tunes for real-user performance using Web Vitals, bundle analysis, and RUM (Datadog or equivalent)