Staff Engineer

About Shibumi and this role

At Shibumi, we build the strategic portfolio management (SPM) platform
that helps some of the world's largest organizations decide where
billions of dollars of strategic investment go. Our customers rely on
the platform to plan, prioritize, fund, and execute their most important
initiatives.

That creates an interesting engineering challenge. Shibumi isn't a
single-purpose application with fixed workflows. It's a configurable
platform where customers define their own business processes, rules,
reporting, and data model. Keeping that flexibility fast, correct, and
maintainable as the platform continues to grow is what makes the work
rewarding.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll be a hands-on technical leader.
You'll design solutions for new initiatives, untangle the hardest
problems in our existing systems, raise the engineering bar through
thoughtful design and code review, and continue shipping meaningful
features yourself.

This role comes with broad ownership. You'll help shape the platform's
technical direction, improve how we build software, and raise the
engineering bar through design, mentorship, and thoughtful technical
leadership. As a Staff Engineer, you'll have broad ownership and
the opportunity to influence both the platform and how we build it.

The goal isn't to close the most tickets. It's to make an established
engineering team meaningfully stronger.

What makes this technically interesting

Shibumi is a configurable, data-driven platform. Customers model their
own initiatives, workflows, business rules, and reporting instead of
adapting their business to fit rigid software. That flexibility
introduces engineering challenges that span application architecture,
distributed systems, data modeling, and performance.

A few examples:

• Multi-tenant SaaS platform running across five production regions plus disaster recovery, backed by a contractual 99.9% availability SLA.
• Business rule engine executing roughly 1 million customer-defined calculations every day.
• Kafka event bus and OpenSearch indexes supporting millions of searchable objects.
• Java/Spring and Rust services powering a React/TypeScript front end, all running on AWS and Kubernetes.

What you'll own

• Significant areas of the platform from ambiguous problem through design, implementation, deployment, and long-term ownership.
• Large initiatives before they reach a sprint by turning broad business goals into technically sound execution plans.
• The cross-cutting technical problems that span services, teams, and architectural boundaries.
• Raising the engineering bar through design discussions, architecture reviews, mentoring, and thoughtful code review.
• Helping the team avoid unnecessary complexity by knowing what not to build.

What we're looking for

We're looking for someone who leads through technical credibility rather
than organizational authority.

You likely have experience:

• Influencing technical direction and earning trust without relying on title.
• Making pragmatic engineering decisions and knowing when simplicity beats elegance.
• Owning and improving large, mature codebases instead of always starting greenfield.
• Building production systems in Java. Spring experience is a plus.
• Working comfortably across backend, frontend, infrastructure, and whatever else the problem requires.
• Communicating effectively with engineers, product managers, QA, and leadership.

We value engineers who simplify systems, question unnecessary
complexity, and consistently leave codebases healthier than they found
them.

This is a senior individual contributor role. Most engineers who succeed
here have spent several years operating at a Senior or Staff level, but
we care far more about the depth of your experience than the number of
years you've worked.

Nice to have

• Multi-tenant SaaS platform experience.
• Event-driven architectures using Kafka or similar messaging systems.
• Experience with TypeScript/React or Rust.
• Experience designing configurable platforms rather than single-purpose applications.

Technologies you'll work with

The core platform is built primarily in Java and Spring, with newer
services written in Rust. Our frontend is built with React and
TypeScript. Services communicate over HTTP and Kafka and run on
AWS using Kubernetes (EKS), MSK, MariaDB,
OpenSearch, S3, and CloudFront.

You'll work across the stack as the problem demands. While most
engineers have areas of expertise, we value curiosity and ownership over
specialization alone.

What success looks like

Within your first six months:

• You've earned the trust of the engineering team.
• You've led one or more significant initiatives from design through production.
• Engineers seek you out for technical guidance.
• The platform is healthier because of architectural and design decisions you've influenced.
• Product managers trust you to help shape ambiguous ideas before implementation begins.

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Logistics, compensation, and process

• Hybrid in Royal Oak, MI preferred; remote within the US will be considered.
• You'll report directly to the SVP of Engineering and work closely with Product, QA, and senior leadership on the technical direction of the platform.
• You must be authorized to work in the United States.
• Shibumi is an equal opportunity employer.