Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer at Shuttlebase — New York, NY, US

  • Company: Shuttlebase
  • Location: New York, NY, US
  • Employment type: Full-time
  • Salary: $190,000–$260,000 a year
  • Posted: 2026-01-23

About this role

WHY SHUTTLEBASE?

Every day, millions of people decide whether to buy something online, and the reasons behind those decisions are still mostly guesswork. We want to change that.

We're working to quantify human psychology: to build an embedding model for human behavior that understands how people react to a page, a price, or a single sentence, and can predict what will work before anyone runs a test.

Every experiment our AI runs on a live store teaches that model something about how people decide. Our goal is for any company to be able to ask, "I'm selling product X to audience Y, how do I optimize for Z?" and get an answer it can trust.

We're early and well funded. The people who join now will pick the tools, design the models, and help choose who joins next. If that's a problem you want to spend the next few years on, we'd like to meet you.

STAFF SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Today our AI proposes changes to live stores, tests them on real shoppers, and learns from what happens. The next version has to do much more: reason about why people buy, plan its own experiments, and get better with every one it runs, across many stores at once. You'll design the systems that make that possible and set the technical direction the rest of the team builds on. You'll still write code every week, and you'll be the person the team comes to when a design decision matters.

WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON

  • The experiment engine. Design the next version of the system that runs every experiment, from the moment the AI has an idea to the final result. It has to stay fast, observable, and reliable at tens of millions of events a day.
  • Agentic AI in production. Build the systems that let the AI look at a store, decide what to test, and put real changes live, with checks that catch mistakes before any shopper sees them.
  • The data behind the model. Decide how we collect and shape our event data so the behavior model can learn from it.
  • How we build. Write the design docs, set the engineering principles we follow, and help the engineers around you grow through code review and pairing.

We mostly work in Python on serverless AWS, JavaScript on the frontend, and Postgres alongside ClickHouse.

YOU'LL LOVE THIS JOB IF

  • You want to design a system from the ground up and live with your decisions.
  • You like making hard technical calls and writing them down so others can build on them.
  • You enjoy making the engineers around you better, and you still want to write code yourself.
  • You can tell when a problem needs a careful design and when it needs a prototype by Friday.
  • You're curious about AI systems that learn and adapt, and you want to see one work on real shoppers.

WHAT YOU BRING

  • 8+ years of experience designing and shipping production systems
  • You've designed distributed systems that handle a lot of data: event-driven services, streaming pipelines, or data-heavy backends.
  • You've been a tech lead or staff engineer. You've written the design docs, reviewed other people's designs, and set the standards a team follows.
  • You're strong in Python and comfortable with AWS and JavaScript, from the backend to the frontend.
  • You can explain a complex system simply, in writing and out loud.
  • Bonus: experience with ClickHouse, LLMs or agents in production, eCommerce or analytics infrastructure, or building a product from zero at a startup.

WHAT WE VALUE

  • Curiosity and excellence: We're trying to understand why people decide what they do, so asking questions is the job. We push on each other's ideas, and a failed experiment teaches us as much as a winning one.
  • Whatever it takes: If something needs doing, whoever can do it does it, whatever their title. Our clients' results are our results.
  • Ownership: Shipping something is where the work starts. You follow it all the way to the result, and when you get something wrong, you say so and fix it. We keep our promises, the big ones and the small ones.
  • Agility: Most ideas go from whiteboard to working prototype in two or three days. If something isn't working, we drop it fast, and nobody holds it against you.
  • Enjoy the ride: Building something new comes with rough weeks. We get through them together and celebrate the good ones.

WHAT WE OFFER

  • Competitive compensation
  • Meaningful equity - real ownership in Shuttlebase’s success.
  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family.
  • Unlimited PTO - we trust you to take the time you need.
  • Tax free commuter and parking benefits
  • Office-first culture (4 days/week) - Midtown Manhattan, in the middle of it all.
  • Work directly with the founding team - your impact is immediate, visible, and career-defining.
  • Free One Medical Membership
  • 401k

Apply at Shuttlebase

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