Staff Software Engineer

Who we are

We're building the next generation of software for our suite of businesses. Our team is developing new products, including an AI-native business platform for customers who manage their own clients, appointments, payments, and growth. We're bringing together the ownership and creativity of an early-stage team with the reach, resources, and shared platforms of Playlist, the company behind Mindbody and ClassPass.

This is an opportunity to help build a product from the ground up, and shape how we build the products that come next. We're exploring how AI can make running a small and medium sized business simpler, while developing engineering practices that use AI to improve both delivery speed and software quality. Our ambition is practical: build reliable tools that give business owners more time to focus on their craft and their clients.

We believe in giving engineers the autonomy to solve meaningful problems and bringing together diverse perspectives to build a better product and a better company. We care less about a perfect match to a particular toolset and more about your judgment, curiosity, and ability to help a team do its best work. You'll partner closely with Engineering leadership, Product, and Design to turn an evolving vision into a product customers can depend on.

You'll likely spend time working on

Designing, building, and shipping customer-facing features across web, mobile, and backend systems, from early exploration through production and ongoing improvement.

Setting technical direction for complex initiatives, making thoughtful tradeoffs between rapid experimentation, maintainability, security, and operational reliability.

Building the foundations of a business-critical product, including scheduling, client management, payments, notifications, and integrations.

Partnering with Product and Design to understand customer needs, shape solutions, scope work, and deliver reliable releases.

Writing and reviewing production code, contributing directly to architecture, implementation, testing, and debugging.

Breaking down ambiguous problems into actionable technical plans and helping the team make progress as priorities evolve.

Raising the technical bar through thoughtful design and code reviews, mentoring, and sharing knowledge with engineers across the team.

Establishing an AI-forward engineering culture by using coding assistants and agentic workflows effectively, with clear expectations for testing, review, correctness, and data privacy.

Helping shape AI-powered customer experiences that can take useful actions while preserving user control and trust.

Improving the practices and foundations that help the team deliver dependable software, including automated testing, observability, release processes, and incident response.

Collaborating with shared platform teams and contributing to broader engineering initiatives across Playlist.

About the right team member

You are an experienced, hands-on engineer who enjoys building customer-facing products and leading through technical contribution and influence. You create clarity when the path forward is not fully defined and can move comfortably between product discussions, architecture, implementation, and production operations.

You bring an early-stage builder's mindset and the judgment to know where speed matters and where getting the fundamentals right is essential. You're excited about AI's potential, but you evaluate tools by the quality and impact of their results, not the novelty of the technology. You measure success by customer outcomes, dependable software, and the strength of the team around you.

You'll thrive in this role with experience in

Building and operating complex customer-facing products end to end, ideally including early-stage launches or significant new product development.

Leading technical initiatives from an individual contributor role, including setting direction, making tradeoffs, and driving execution across teams.

Designing and implementing web or mobile applications and their supporting backend systems, APIs, and data models.

Translating ambiguity into focused technical plans and balancing near-term delivery with long-term system health.

Partnering closely with Product and Design to validate customer needs, manage scope, and respond to changing priorities.

Building reliable systems through effective testing, code review, observability, release practices, and incident management.

Mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards through collaboration, feedback, and example.

Applying AI-assisted development tools in real engineering workflows, with an understanding of their limitations and the guardrails needed for production software.

Communicating clearly with technical and nontechnical audiences and building trust across teams

Experience with Platform Engineer and cross-platform mobile delivery, payments or scheduling systems, SaaS products for small businesses, or AI-powered product experiences would be especially valuable.

Technologies you'll be working with

We value adaptability and problem-solving over specific tools. Our stack and practices will continue to evolve, but you'll likely work with:

TypeScript / JavaScript, React, and Next.js.

React Native for cross-platform mobile experiences.

AWS infrastructure and DynamoDB-backed services.

Claude Code and other AI-assisted development tools, agentic workflows, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations.

GitHub, automated testing, CI/CD, and observability tools.

You don't need to be an expert in every part of the stack, but you should be comfortable contributing hands-on, learning new technologies, and guiding technical decisions.

Pay Transparency

It is Playlist's intent to pay all team members competitive wages and salaries that are motivational, fair, and equitable. The goal of Playlist's compensation program is to be transparent, attract potential employees, meet the needs of all current employees, and encourage team members to stay with our organization. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location.

The base salary range for this position in the United States is $181,500 to $242,000. The total compensation package for this position may also include a performance bonus, benefits, and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans.