Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Grader)

Owner is an AI-native platform helping independent restaurants manage online ordering, websites, marketing, and customer experience. The Staff Software Engineer will own and scale the backend services and data pipelines powering the Grader product, improve reliability and observability, establish platform foundations, and collaborate with product and AI teams.

Responsibilities:

• Own the backend services and data pipelines that power Grader scans end-to-end — from ingesting third-party presence signals (Google, Yelp, menus, LLM GEO signals) to serving results reliably at scale
• Harden the platform before expansion — reduce latency, increase uptime, and build the observability and alerting layer the team needs to confidently scale Grader into new scoring dimensions
• Establish platform foundations — shared abstractions, operational runbooks, and architectural patterns that reduce toil and give other engineers a reliable base to build on
• Partner closely with PLG product and the AI Agents team as Grader evolves into a broader AI-powered tool for restaurant owners

Requirements:

• 7+ years, with meaningful time owning backend services in production
• Experience building and operating data pipelines, third-party integrations, and async processing systems at scale
• Proven track record improving system reliability — observability, alerting, incident reduction, and making operational health a team habit
• Experience at a product-focused startup or scale-up where you owned systems end-to-end
• High degree of cross-functional collaboration — past colleagues in product, design, and business would speak highly of your teamwork
• Strong sense of ownership and drive, excellent communication, and a proactive approach to identifying and solving problems