Who We Are
Popfly is building the infrastructure for the creator economy. Already the leading platform of adventure creators and brands, Popfly is a place where collaboration replaces chaos, and authentic partnerships replace transactional campaigns. Brands like GoPro, Smith Optics, and Backcountry use Popfly to discover vetted creators, collaborate through the entire creative process, and track performance that actually drives revenue. Creators use us to connect with brands they actually care about, manage their workflow, and get paid.
We’re a fast-scaling startup that’s proven product-market fit and is now racing from thousands to millions of users. Our small and nimble engineering team has built a sophisticated platform that handles everything from creator-brand matching to real-time collaboration tools, payment processing, affiliate tracking, and analytics - all purpose-built for the adventure space. We believe perfect is the enemy of shipped, and pragmatic excellence beats over-engineered solutions every time. We’re not building one-off campaigns; we’re building the connected creator ecosystem that defines the future of authentic brand storytelling.
The Role
We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives in the 0→100 phase of a hyper-growth startup. You’ll grow into a technical co-leader who doesn’t just execute tasks but owns entire domains, architects scalable solutions, and elevates the team through strong technical leadership.
This is not a typical engineering role. Your work could look something like:
- 50% – Building sophisticated systems, features, and algorithms (creator-brand matching, recommendation engines, analytics pipelines, real-time collaboration), improving and extending existing features
- 25% – Platform evolution (scaling architecture, monitoring, potential containerization and platform migrations)
- 25% – Technical co-leadership (architectural decisions, guiding engineers when needed)
- …and then an extra 50% spent dreaming up the future, inventing, prototyping, spotting the fires no one sees yet, and quietly solving them before anyone panics
What You’ll Own
Features & Product Intelligence
- Own the lifecycle of sophisticated features: problem framing, prototype, launch, and post-launch iteration.
- Partner with product to set success metrics for matching, recommendations, and creator-brand search quality.
Platform & Infrastructure
- Design and implement horizontal scaling strategies for services as we grow from thousands to millions of requests
- Optimize SQL Server performance and evaluate data architecture decisions
- Own monitoring, observability, and incident response infrastructure
- Containerize our .NET applications for better resource management and deployment velocity
Technical Leadership
- Collaborate with product and engineering leaders to guide the team through code reviews, architectural decisions, and quality control
- Make high-leverage decisions: when to extract microservices, when to refactor vs. rebuild, and when “good enough” is actually right
- Champion engineering best practices while understanding startup trade-offs - we ship fast, but we ship with quality
- Bridge between product/design vision and technical execution - take a rough direction or half-formed idea from product/eng leadership and turn it into a sharp, well-scoped spec the team can build against
- Translate the “why” into the “what” and “how”: pressure-test the vision, surface the edge cases and trade-offs early, and write specs that are clear enough that the right solution becomes obvious
Our Stack
- Backend: .NET Core, C#, EF Core, MSSQL Server
- Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, MUI, TanStack Query
- Infrastructure: Heroku, Azure, AWS, RabbitMQ
- Key integrations: Shopify, Stripe, Autumn, Algolia, Phyllo, Cloudinary, TalkJS, Liveblocks, Knock, SendGrid, Datadog
- AI: OpenAI/Anthropic APIs woven into product features where they add real value
You’re a Great Fit If
Must-Haves
- 4-5+ years of software engineering experience
- Strong algorithm, data structures, and design patterns fluency
- Data and experimentation mindset: define metrics, run A/B tests, and iterate on performance.
- Production Platform/DevOps experience
- Cloud infrastructure knowledge
- Technical leadership - you’ve influenced architecture and made strategic engineering decisions
- Product sense & spec-writing - you can absorb product/leadership vision, ask the questions that expose what’s really being asked for, and translate it into excellent, buildable specs and features (not just implement tickets handed to you)
- Startup mentality - you understand that “perfect is the enemy of good” and can make pragmatic trade-offs
- You’re obsessed with using AI tools like Cursor/Claude Code and beyond, to enhance your effectiveness and productivity, while not sacrificing any quality and maintainability
Nice-to-Haves
- Expertise in .NET, C#, MSSQL, React/Next.js
- Experience building product features on top of LLM APIs (OpenAI/Anthropic)
- Containerization experience (Docker production; Kubernetes; Terraform)
- Experience with context-engineering / MCP
- Recsys or marketplace matching experience
- Strong design taste and a track record of great product/UX
You’ll Fail If
- You need everything to be “perfect” before shipping
- You prefer to work in isolation vs. collaborating closely with product/design/operations/other engineers
- You’re more interested in completing tickets than owning business outcomes
- You need a fully-specced ticket to start - you can’t take a vision or rough direction and then iterate and shape it into the right spec and implementation
- You believe in gold-plating solutions or chasing every new tech trend
- You think responsibility ends at your job title instead of stepping in when something needs to get done
What We Offer
- Competitive salary range: $140k – $180k, which may vary based on relevant experience, skill level, and geographic location
- Autonomy & ownership: You’ll influence technical direction and the future of our company
- Modern stack with well-supported technologies
- Impact: your work directly influences thousands of creators and brands
- Flexible health benefits: a customizable healthcare reimbursement plan to fit your needs.
- Adventure Cash: We’ll cover some of your next adventure—go explore!
- Annual Retreat: A fun, team-building getaway to recharge and connect with the team.
- Unlimited PTO: Take the time you need to get outside, travel, recharge and perform at your best.
Our Engineering Culture
- Ship with quality, but ship fast - we iterate based on real user feedback
- Consistency compounds - we favor uniform “good enough” patterns
- Fail fast - clear error handling, early returns, structured logging
- Readable over clever - clarity beats complexity
- Test what matters - unit tests for business logic, integration/E2E for critical flows
- See a problem, own the problem - ownership extends beyond titles
Ready to Build Something Extraordinary?
If this sounds like you and you’re excited about joining our fast-growing startup, then we want to hear from you!
Apply with:
- Your resume, LinkedIn, and GitHub if applicable
- A brief note explaining one or more of the following:
- Your most impactful technical project in the last 2 years
- Your experience with algorithms/AI and platform/DevOps work
- Why Popfly’s mission and stage excite you
Popfly is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
