Senior / Staff Software Engineer

Instawork’s vision is to create economic opportunities for local businesses and skilled hourly workers in communities around the world. With an AI-first approach, we’re supercharging the leading online labor marketplace and looking for exceptional talent to help us build the future of hourly work. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and more, we want you to help us continue to scale quickly and make an even greater impact.

We have an immediate opening for a Senior/Staff Software Engineer, with a proven track record of success to join our rapidly growing team. You’ll operate at the intersection of engineering, product, and design—owning high-impact product initiatives from ideation to launch. You will set the technical direction for critical features, architect systems for scale, and mentor other engineers. You’ll work closely with cross-functional partners to ensure that our product not only meets functional requirements but also delivers an exceptional user experience.

You are someone who thrives in ambiguous problem spaces, has strong product instincts, and can translate customer needs into technical solutions that drive business outcomes.

What You'll Do:

• Lead Product Development – Partner with product managers and designers to translate customer problems into technical solutions, shaping product requirements and priorities.


• Technical Architecture & Execution – Design and implement scalable, maintainable, and performant systems that support our product roadmap.


• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Work closely with product, design, data, and other engineering teams to ensure alignment from concept to deployment.


• Mentorship & Influence – Guide mid- and senior-level engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and architectural discussions, raising the technical bar across the organization.


• End-to-End Ownership – Drive projects from ideation through deployment, including monitoring, quality assurance, and iteration based on user feedback.


• Champion Best Practices – Advocate for engineering excellence, maintainable codebases, and continuous improvement in developer experience.


• Strategic Technical Input – Contribute to long-term technical roadmaps, balancing short-term delivery with scalable design.

Who You Are:

• 10+ years of experience


• Must be hands-on and coding 80% of time with strong engineering fundamentals


• Experience working in agile, fast-paced environments


• Experience working with large amounts of data and designing scalable backend systems for high throughput


• Experience with modern frontend frameworks/libraries such as React, Angular, or Vue.js


• Track record of launching and iterating on apps or large software projects


• Recruiting experience (sourcing, interviewing, offering, etc) is ideal


• Full-stack engineering background


• Django, Python, React & React Native are preferred and nice-to-have to optimize ramp up time


• Experience in a product-led tech company or startup environment is a plus.

For CA based applicants:

• The base salary for this position is $180,000 - $230,000


• This position is eligible for equity in the form of stock options


• This position is eligible for Instawork benefits, including:
  
  
  
  • Variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with coverage beginning on the date of hire
  
  
  • Flexible paid time off
  
  
  • At least 8 paid company holidays annually
  
  
  • Home office stipend
  
  
  • Phone stipend
  
  
  • Commuter stipend
  
  
  • Supplemental pay on qualified leaves
  
  
  • Employee health savings accounts (HSA) contribution
  
  
  • Flexible spending plans
  
  
  • 401K plan
  
  
  • Perkspot - discount program through Lumity
  
  

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed above.

Our Values

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  Empathy, Trust & Candor
  We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.



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  Bias for Action
  We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!



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  Always Be Learning
  We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.



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  Act Like an Owner
  We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.

About Instawork

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started!

Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.