Staff Engineer
- Role
- Backend
- Experience
- Staff
- Company size
- Startup
Open to US only. Set where you work from to check your eligibility.
No BS summary
Staff-level backend/platform engineer with roughly 8+ years of depth building production systems at scale. Needs hands-on experience in a modern backend stack, scalable data modeling across relational and non-relational stores, and routine LLM/AI-assisted engineering workflows.
Core skills
Optional skills
About Dutchie
Founded in 2017, Dutchie is a comprehensive technology platform powering dispensary operations, while providing consumers with safe and easy access to cannabis. Dutchie aims to further support the positive societal change the cannabis industry brings to the world through wellness benefits, social justice, and empowering local communities through tax revenue. Powering thousands of dispensaries across 40+ markets throughout the United States and Canada, Dutchie is the leading technology company in the cannabis space and was named in Fast Company’s 10 Most Innovative Companies in North America and listed two years in a row on LinkedIn’s Top 50 Startups.
Dutchie has raised over $600M in funding to date, backed by D1 Capital Partners, Tiger Global, Dragoneer, DFJ Growth, Thrive Capital, Howard Schultz, Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital, Gron Ventures, members of the founding team at DoorDash, Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures, and other notable angel investors.
About This Job
We're hiring a Staff Engineer at Dutchie — someone who works across teams to solve the hardest problems, spot them early, and steer the technical direction so we hit fewer of them down the road.
You'll work at the core of our platform: making it better, faster, and more reliable; and partner with teams across the org on the integrations and shared problems no single team owns. You'll shape how we build, including what good engineering looks like when AI is part of everyday work.
The world of cannabis changes constantly, and we optimize our process for meeting that need while maintaining a high quality bar. We push context down, concerns up, and lean on a strong bias for ownership. If that's your kind of place, let's talk.
What You'll Do…
- Make real improvements to enterprise-grade retail software at scale
- Set technical direction — make the architecture calls that shape how systems evolve, and align teams behind them
- Work with stakeholders to scope, sharpen, and stress-test customer-facing features
- Get in front of customers to learn how they work and where it hurts, then turn that into better products
- Partner across the org on unified solutions for problems that span teams
- Mentor other engineers — everyone had help to get here, reinforce your own skills by helping others grow theirs
- Help the team plan, estimate, and de-risk big work by breaking it down and sequencing it well
- Set the bar for engineering judgment, code quality, and craft
What You Bring...
- We're flexible on years of experience. The depth and influence we're after usually show up around 8+ years in, but it's about what you can do, not the number on your résumé.
Engineering depth (the foundation)
- A track record of building and running production systems at scale
- Deep, hands-on experience in at least one modern backend stack — across Dutchie you'll find .NET/C#, TypeScript, Ruby, and React on the frontend, backed by PostgreSQL, MS SQL, and MongoDB. We care more about how fast you ramp than a perfect stack match on day one
- Experience designing scalable data models across relational and non-relational stores
- Pride in your craft — code that's clean, tested, and easy for the next person to build on
AI-native ways of working (how you operate)
- You use LLMs routinely — researching unfamiliar systems, diagnosing issues, planning solutions to messy problems, writing and reviewing code, and watching what you ship
- You are comfortable and excited about an agentic first environment. You know how to utilize AI to ship better solutions faster and safer than you could by hand alone.
- You raise the team's baseline — turning one-off wins into repeatable practices
How you show up (the multipliers)
- You make the people around you better — your biggest impact isn't just your code, it's how you raise everyone else's output and judgment
- You're genuinely curious about customers, and you let their pain points steer where the team spends its effort
- When a problem spans multiple teams and no one owns the whole thing, you're the one who scopes it, breaks it into pieces teams can run with, and keeps them pointed the same way
- You can hold several threads at once — a few projects plus the broader technical direction — and reprioritize cleanly when things shift
- You know where process helps and where it's in the way
- You communicate well — you make hard trade-offs clear to engineers, product, and leadership alike
- You own outcomes, not tasks — from ambiguous to shipped, accountable for how it runs in production
It’s a Bonus if You…
- Have experience in the cannabis industry — building for it, working in it, or just knowing the space
- Have built POS, Ecommerce, Payments, or other retail and commerce technology
- Have built and monitored cloud-native infrastructure (AWS)
- Have deep experience with third-party integrations
- Have brought AI-assisted workflows, tooling, or agents to an engineering team
You’ll Get…
We are targeting a starting salary of $170,000 - $230,000 based on the intended level for this role.
In addition to cash compensation, our total rewards package includes:
- Full medical benefits including dental and vision plans to ensure you always have the best care.
- Equity packages in the form of stock options to all employees.
- Technology (hardware, software, reading materials, etc..) allowance
- Flexible vacation and sick days
At Dutchie, we’re committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and teammates without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Dutchie believes that diversity and inclusion among our teammates is critical to our success, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool.
What you'll do
- Make real improvements to enterprise-grade retail software at scale
- Set technical direction and make architecture calls that shape how systems evolve
- Align teams behind technical direction
- Work with stakeholders to scope, sharpen, and stress-test customer-facing features
- Meet customers to learn how they work and where it hurts, then turn that into better products
- Partner across the organization on unified solutions for problems that span teams
- Mentor other engineers
- Help the team plan, estimate, and de-risk big work by breaking it down and sequencing it well
- Set the bar for engineering judgment, code quality, and craft
What they require
- Flexible on years of experience; the depth and influence sought usually show up around 8+ years in
- Track record of building and running production systems at scale
- Deep, hands-on experience in at least one modern backend stack
- Experience designing scalable data models across relational and non-relational stores
- Writes clean, tested code that is easy for the next person to build on
- Uses LLMs routinely for researching unfamiliar systems, diagnosing issues, planning solutions to messy problems, writing and reviewing code, and watching what they ship
- Comfortable and excited about an agentic-first environment
- Knows how to utilize AI to ship better solutions faster and safer than by hand alone
- Raises the team's baseline by turning one-off wins into repeatable practices
- Makes the people around them better and raises others' output and judgment
- Genuinely curious about customers and lets their pain points steer where the team spends effort
- Can scope problems spanning multiple teams, break them into pieces teams can run with, and keep teams aligned
- Can hold several threads at once, including a few projects plus broader technical direction, and reprioritize cleanly when things shift
- Knows where process helps and where it is in the way
- Communicates well and makes hard trade-offs clear to engineers, product, and leadership
- Owns outcomes, not tasks, from ambiguity to shipped production operation
- Preferred: Experience in the cannabis industry
- Preferred: Experience building POS, Ecommerce, Payments, or other retail and commerce technology
- Preferred: Deep experience with third-party integrations
- Preferred: Experience bringing AI-assisted workflows, tooling, or agents to an engineering team
Benefits
- Full medical benefits including dental and vision plans
- Equity packages in the form of stock options to all employees
- Technology allowance for hardware, software, reading materials, etc.
- Flexible vacation and sick days
Dutchie is a comprehensive technology platform powering dispensary operations and providing consumers with access to cannabis, serving thousands of dispensaries across 40+ markets in the United States and Canada.