Staff Software Engineer (Technical Lead - Planning)

Who we are:

ChartHop is an AI-native HR & Organizational Intelligence platform, connecting your people and business data in one technology to deliver performance, engagement, HRIS, compensation, org planning and analytics. Our product brings transparency to organizations through analytics, connected business data, and highly configurable HR workflows. Our clients include Sweetgreen, 1Password, Zapier, and Headspace.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer (Technical Lead) to help evolve one of ChartHop's most business-critical product areas. This role will initially focus on our Planning product, where you'll build, scale, and modernize complex planning workflows used by our largest customers. You'll tackle challenges like scenario modeling across large organizational hierarchies, performance optimization at scale, and building UX that works for non-technical HR leaders.

You'll work alongside two senior engineers and a dedicated Product Manager, with direct partnership with Ian White, our CEO/CTO, on technical direction. We expect you to grow into full architectural ownership of this domain. That starts with collaboration and building shared context, then expands into increasing autonomy as trust develops. As a small, agile team, you should expect your scope to evolve as business priorities shift; we're looking for someone who's energized by that, not frustrated by it.

Company Stage: Series C, $75M raised

Location: Remote (US Timezones)

Key Investors: a16z

Compensation: $180k-$225k base + bonus and equity (salary range dependent on experience)

Role Type: Individual Contributor

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain backend-heavy features in a large, long-lived codebase

• Own the technical health of a core product area, including performance, reliability, and scalability

• Partner with the CEO/CTO to align on architectural direction and translate ideas into shippable solutions

• Break down product initiatives into clear technical plans and guide day-to-day execution

• Improve data models and system behavior to better support growth and larger customers

• Balance new feature development with targeted refactors and operational improvements

• Participate in the on-call rotation and help improve observability, monitoring, and incident response; incidents are infrequent but require timely response when they occur

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product and other technical leads to keep the broader platform cohesive

What does success look like?

We will measure success through:

• Feature Delivery: Consistent delivery of customer-facing functionality aligned with product commitments

• System Health: Improvements in performance, scalability, and reliability over time

• Technical Progress: Meaningful reduction of high-impact technical debt through incremental change

• Operational Readiness: Production issues are understood, monitored, and addressed proactively

• Team Impact: Clear technical direction, effective collaboration, and steady execution within the group you support

Skills and Experiences We Value

• 7+ years building and scaling backend systems in production environments

• Comfort working in monolithic or legacy systems and improving them incrementally

• Strong judgment around tradeoffs between speed, quality, and long-term maintainability

• Experience collaborating closely with product and business stakeholders

• Clear communicator who can explain technical decisions for diverse audiences

• Comfortable contributing across the stack, including frontend

Experience with any part of our stack is a strong plus, including Kotlin, TypeScript/React, MongoDB, and AWS. We value engineers who are curious, pragmatic, and eager to learn. Prior experience in the HR, compensation, or planning domain is helpful but not required. It’s more important that you can learn quickly and apply sound engineering principles.

Who Thrives Here

You’ll do well in this role if you:

• Enjoy owning complex systems with real customer and business impact

• Prefer incremental improvement over large rewrites

• Are comfortable partnering with strong technical leadership and earning trust through delivery

• Care deeply about shipping, while still thinking ahead about where the system needs to go

How We Work

We're a remote team distributed across US time zones. We default to async communication and protect time for focused work, with most collaboration happening in Slack and documented decisions. Expect some synchronous overlap for team ceremonies and cross-functional work.

What Values We Have:

• Fast: Move with intentional speed.

• Inclusive: Welcome our differences.

• Transparent: Trust, collaborate, share.

• Optimistic: Dream big, think practically.

• All-in: Own our destiny.

Perks and Benefits including:

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, LTD, STD

• Mental Health Benefits (Spring Health, Headspace, Calm)

• Flexible Time Off Policy

• 13 Public Holidays

• 401K Match (US Employees)

• Parental leave

Interview Process (all remote video calls)

• Talent Partner Screen (30 mins)

• Hiring Manager Screen (45 mins)

• Collaboration Interview (45 mins)

• Systems Design Interview (45 mins)

• Leadership & Culture Interview (45 mins)

ChartHop is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.