The Staff Engineer will architect and evolve the core product platform, providing technical direction, mentoring teammates, and solving complex engineering challenges in frontend architecture and data systems.
Join Modulate as we pioneer the future of prosocial voice intelligence! Our unique conversational voice intelligence platform is designed to integrate smoothly with real commercial workflows at enterprise scale, unlocking unprecedented abilities to moderate content, prevent fraud, improve contact center experiences, and more.
We’re looking for a Staff Engineer to help architect, scale, and evolve our core product platform as we grow into new markets and customer segments. We want a Solver archetype who can act as a trusted problem-solver who goes deep into knotty problems that are critical and which lack a clear approach or carry high levels of risk, and continues to work on them until they’re resolved. As our team matures, there’s the potential to recast into a Tech Lead role that owns a specific, highly-valuable engineering domain for Modulate.
You’ll operate as a technical mentor and guide across multiple systems with a particular emphasis on frontend architecture, system interfaces, and data persistence layers. Your goal will be ensuring Modulate’s technology remains robust, performant, and extensible as we scale. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role ideal for an experienced full-stack or systems engineer with a strong track record of technical leadership and deep hands-on experience in frontend practices and modern database systems.
The salary for this position is set to $185,000/year. This position will operate under our hybrid policy with 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday) in-office in Somerville, MA. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.
To avoid losing progress on your application, please feel free to complete responses separately in a local or cloud-saved document. If you encounter an error, any responses entered in the fields on the application will not be saved.
No unsolicited agencies, please!
What you’ll do:
- Provide technical direction across the engineering org: guiding architectural choices, mentoring teammates, and ensuring we’re building scalable, maintainable systems.
- Dive deep into thorny problems in partnership with Director of Engineering. Guide development of complex projects across our products with an emphasis on frontend interfaces and high-performance data storage and retrieval patterns.
- Design and evolve our web application architecture to support real-time workflows and robust moderation and investigation tools.
- Collaborate with product managers, backend/ML engineers, and design partners to ensure user-facing tools are intuitive, reliable, and performant.
- Shape long-term technical strategy around data models, storage, observability, and operational reliability.
- Contribute to roadmap planning, technical scoping, and standards definition across teams.
Desired qualifications:
- Clear, thoughtful communicator and collaborator. Comfortable operating across product, design, and platform teams.
- Effective in making tradeoffs between speed and quality in order to balance short- and long-term org needs.
- Org-first engineer with demonstrated record of raising the team along with themselves.
- Extensive engineering experience (typically 8+ years) across multiple layers of the web stack, with a strong record of technical ownership and impact.
- Deep proficiency in modern frontend development and frontend system architecture.
- Strong practical experience with database design, performance tuning, and data modeling, including relational and non-relational databases.
- Demonstrated ability to navigate and set direction in ambiguous or rapidly evolving environments.
- Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code, cloud services (AWS preferred), and devops practices a plus.
NOTE for the questions "Your fit for the role", "Your values/goals", and "Why Modulate?" on the following form:
Please avoid disclosing any details which would directly reveal your race, age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other protected demographic status. We are only looking for information which directly relates to your ability to succeed in the given role.
Additionally, we want to hear from YOU! While we understand the convenience of productivity tools and generative AI to help apply, please note that any submissions with substantial overlap or duplication with other applicant profiles will NOT be considered.
Top Skills
AWS
Data Modeling
Devops Practices
Frontend Development
Infrastructure-As-Code
Non-Relational Databases
Relational Databases
Modulate Somerville, Massachusetts, USA Office
Easily accessible on the Red Line, Davis Square is one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods, filled with sleek bars, restaurants offering a wide variety of cuisine options, and a thriving cultural scene.
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