Staff Software Engineer, Backend
Staff-level remote backend engineer (Greater Toronto Area) at GlossGenius/Genius AI, acting as technical anchor for 0-to-1 AI products: setting architecture, integrating LLMs into production systems, and hands-on building (~60% architecture, 40% coding) with Kotlin, AWS, and Kubernetes.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Not listed
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Backend
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 7+ years of professional engineering experience with strong backend focus
- Track record owning system design and architectural choices for high-scale or high-growth products
- Integrated LLMs into production systems and uses AI tooling in the development workflow
- Deep Kotlin expertise with strong backend architecture, service design, and performance-at-scale skills
- Solid command of modern cloud infrastructure: AWS and Kubernetes
- Comfortable making architectural calls with incomplete information and iterating rapidly in production
- Able to align PMs, designers, and engineering teams around a shared technical vision
- Exceptional communicator who can explain architectural trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders
Nice to have
- TypeScript experience
Full description
About Genius AI
Genius AI is building technology to help local businesses run themselves. Genius AI products do the admin work that keeps practitioners from the work they love and the people they serve. From GlossGenius to Reception, its products work 24/7 on busywork like booking, marketing, client management, finances, staff and inventory management, and more.
Genius AI technology has saved businesses 106M in admin hours, earned them $2.0B in additional revenue, and facilitated more than 624M client touch points.
About the Role
Genius AI is building 0-to-1 AI products we expect to be a massive revenue driver, and this role sits at the center of that build. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you'll be the technical anchor for our highest-innovation teams: setting architectural direction, validating options through proof-of-concepts, and turning ambitious initiatives into clear, buildable roadmaps. This is an IC role with real leadership weight, roughly 60% architecture, planning, and technical direction, 40% hands-on building. The person in this role will be a force multiplier: unblocking engineers before they know they're stuck, making the hardest technical calls so the team doesn't lose momentum, and setting a new standard for what great backend engineering looks like at Genius AI. You won't be maintaining systems someone else designed, you'll be raising the ceiling on what this team can build, and doing it in a way that makes everyone around you better in the process.
This role is remote in the Greater Toronto Area.
What You'll Do
- Architect and own the technical direction of AI-powered products and 0-to-1 builds, weighing long-term trade-offs with precision and keeping a healthy backlog of forward-looking, build-ready work
- Integrate AI models and LLMs into customer-facing products, not as experiments, but as production systems with real reliability and performance requirements
- Shape how Genius AI builds with AI, your architectural decisions will define what's possible across the product for years
- Write high-quality code and rapidly ship proof-of-concepts to validate architectural options and tackle the team's hardest technical challenges before they become blockers
- Partner with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business goals into well-architected initiatives with clear sequencing and minimal rework
- Proactively identify and resolve systemic technical debt before it slows the team down, unblock engineers, raise the quality bar, and make the people around you disproportionately more effective
What We're Looking For
- 7+ years of professional engineering experience with a strong backend focus, and a track record of owning system design and architectural choices for high-scale or high-growth products