Staff Software Engineer

About Supernal

Supernal helps small-to-medium businesses hire their first AI employee. Our AI teammates are built using intelligent, agentic workflows deployed on a proprietary platform. We deliver working, value-generating AI Employees—not tools—that handle real business processes alongside human teams.

The Role

We're looking for a Staff/Principal Software Engineer to own and evolve the core platform that powers our AI employees. This is a technical leadership position responsible for the systems that enable our agents to scale reliably: the Django backend, distributed task infrastructure, event-driven architecture, Kubernetes deployments, and observability stack.

You'll work across the full system—from database query optimization to Helm chart tuning to designing new platform abstractions. You'll be a force multiplier for the engineering team, driving architectural decisions, eliminating scaling bottlenecks, and establishing patterns that make the platform more robust and developer-friendly.

This role reports to the Director of Engineering and involves significant autonomy in shaping technical direction.

What You'll Own

• Drive platform architecture decisions and align the team on scalable patterns and long-term maintainability

  Review a high volume of code, design docs, and architectural proposals for scalability, reliability, security, and operability

  Be a technical mentor and force multiplier: unblock engineers, raise the bar on production readiness, and establish platform best practices

  Own and evolve the core backend platform (Django/DRF/ASGI) performance and correctness

  Scale async execution across Celery + Dramatiq + Temporal/Cortex; implement resilient workflow patterns (retries, circuit breakers, graceful degradation)

  Optimize PostgreSQL/pgvector (query tuning, connection pooling) and caching strategies

  Maintain and improve Kubernetes deployment infrastructure (GKE, Helm, Terraform/OpenTofu) and CI/CD + rollout strategies. Own KEDA autoscaling policies and resource allocation across worker pools.

  Own reliability of RabbitMQ, Redis, and PostgreSQL infrastructure; lead incident response and post-mortems

  Extend OpenTelemetry + Datadog instrumentation, dashboards, alerts, and SLOs; profile and reduce latency/memory bottlenecks

What We're Looking For

Required

• 10+ years building and operating production backend systems at scale

  Deep expertise in Python (Django preferred) and relational databases (PostgreSQL)

  Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Helm, and cloud infrastructure (GCP preferred)

  Strong background in distributed systems: message queues, event sourcing, workflow orchestration

  Production experience with async task systems (Celery, Dramatiq, or similar)

  Track record of debugging complex production issues across multiple services

  Ability to work autonomously and drive technical initiatives without close supervision

  Clear technical communication—able to explain tradeoffs and build consensus

Preferred

• Experience with Temporal or similar workflow engines

  Background in LLM infrastructure, RAG systems, or AI/ML platforms

  Familiarity with OpenTelemetry, Datadog, or similar observability stacks

  Experience with KEDA or other Kubernetes autoscaling solutions

  Contributions to multi-tenant SaaS platform architecture

  History of improving developer experience and platform abstractions

What Success Looks Like

• Platform services maintain high availability with predictable performance under load

  Scaling bottlenecks are identified and resolved proactively

  New features ship faster because platform primitives are well-designed and documented

  Incidents are rare, quickly detected, and thoroughly addressed

  Engineers across the team adopt platform patterns and best practices

  Technical debt is systematically identified and paid down

  You're a trusted technical voice in architectural discussions

Compensation & Logistics

• Compensation: Competitive salary commensurate with experience (Staff/Principal level)

  Location: Remote

  Type: Full-time

  Requirements: Overlap with Americas timezones for collaboration; reliable high-speed internet