Senior Staff Software Engineer

Location: Shanghai and Chengdu Workstream is a mission-driven company building the all-in-one HR, payroll, and hiring platform for managing the hourly workforce. There are 2.7 billion hourly workers, making up 80% of the global workforce, but this market has been heavily underserved by technology and deserves better. Workstream has been purpose-built for the hourly workforce from day one so that these businesses and their employees can thrive. Our customers include leading brands from multiple sectors, including Burger King, Carl's Jr./Hardee's, IHOP, KFC, and Culvers. We are a high growth series B company and quickly expanding our product portfolio to deliver on our vision. We are backed by legendary VCs and industry experts like Founders Fund, BOND, and Coatue. Grow With Us We are a team from UC Berkeley, Cornell, SJTU, Cambridge, and NUS, with broad industry experience from Tencent, Alibaba, Amazon, ByteDance, and more. Our engineering team builds innovative cloud technology solutions that empower local businesses to thrive and better serve the deskless workforce in their communities. We're looking for an experienced Senior Staff Software Engineer to shape our engineering strategy, lead complex initiatives across multiple teams, and drive architectural excellence across the organization. This role is ideal for a highly experienced technical leader who combines deep engineering expertise, strong architectural judgment, and the ability to translate complex business challenges into scalable technical solutions. This is a full-time, hybrid position requiring 1 day per week in the office to support close cross-functional collaboration. Day in the Life: Architect and deliver strategic engineering initiatives spanning multiple squads, coordinating parallel execution across engineers and AI agents. Own multi-squad systems architecture and establish technical direction, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, reliable, and cost-effective. Solve complex, organization-wide engineering challenges and drive architectural improvements that benefit multiple teams. Lead critical technical escalations and complex system incidents, driving effective recovery and long-term reliability improvements. Shape AI adoption strategies across engineering teams, including AI-assisted development, automated incident response, and production safeguards. Partner with engineering leaders, Product, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous business problems into technical strategies that support organizational goals. Establish engineering best practices, mentor technical leads, and raise engineering standards through influence and collaboration. Who You Are: 10 to 12+ years of experience building, architecting, and scaling complex production software systems. Deep expertise in at least one mainstream programming language (JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, PHP, C#, etc.), with the ability to work across different technology stacks. Excellent computer science fundamentals, problem-solving skills, and architectural design capabilities. Proven experience owning complex systems and driving technical architecture and initiatives across multiple engineering teams. Strong understanding of distributed systems, system scalability, security, performance, and architectural trade-offs. Demonstrated ability to lead high-impact engineering projects, manage critical technical escalations, and make sound decisions under pressure. Strong strategic thinking and communication skills, with the ability to influence engineering direction and align technical decisions with business objectives. Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and technical leads while building ownership and technical capabilities across teams. Experience driving engineering improvements, technical standards, and organizational adoption of new technologies. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Nice to Have: Experience with Ruby on Rails or Node.js. Experience with both is a plus. Familiarity with React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis. Experience with AWS, Terraform, microservices, and distributed systems. Experience implementing AI-assisted engineering workflows, agent-driven development, or AI-powered incident management. Experience working with globally distributed engineering teams across multiple time zones. What We Offer: A mission-driven and value-based company dedicated to empowering deskless workers and local businesses An early employee opportunity at a Series B hyper-growth startup Work with the founding team and industry veterans to accelerate your career Competitive salary and equity Comprehensive health coverage In-office amenities and stocked kitchen Flexible PTO Hybrid Office/WFH schedule Know More About Workstream https://www.workstream.us/blog/funding-series-b https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/26/workstreams-text-based-recruitment-tool-gets-a-48m-bet-from-bond-and-beyond/ https://techbuzz.news/buzzworthy-august-27-2021/ Additional Information Workstream provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. We are committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals.