Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer (Product & Integrations)

About Home From College

Home From College (H\FC) is redefining how brands connect with the next generation of talent and consumers. With over 500,000 Gen Z students across every major U.S. campus and 1,000+ brand partners including Uber, Poppi, and Etsy, we’re building the leading platform where students turn creativity into opportunity—and where brands authentically show up on campus and online.

We’re in a stage of rapid growth, backed by Google Ventures and leading investors, and are looking for a Staff Senior Software Engineer to help shape the next chapter. This role will sit on our Engineering Team, reporting directly to the Head of Engineering.

About the Role

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to play a critical role in architecting and building the systems that power the H\FC Marketplace.

This is a primarily a hands-on, individual contributor role. That said, the candidate will help drive technical direction and influence overall architecture and setup. You will spend the majority of your time writing production code, shipping features, and owning complex integrations end-to-end, while also helping shape architectural standards, technical strategy, and long-term platform decisions.

Product & Integrations Engineering is central to how H\FC operates. Connecting companies and student creators sits at the heart of our business model, and those connections depend on reliable, scalable integrations with third-party platforms, internal services, and external data systems.

You will own some of the most critical surfaces of our platform, from API architecture to user-facing workflows, while influencing how we design systems for scale, reliability, and long-term velocity.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain integrations with social media APIs (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Meta, X), ecommerce/payment APIs (Shopify, Stripe, PayPal), affiliate APIs, and Google APIs (OAuth, Calendar, Gmail).

• Architect and implement full-stack features end-to-end, from backend services and APIs to frontend user experiences.

• Own mission-critical systems that depend on external platforms, ensuring resilience against rate limits, API changes, and service instability.

• Make pragmatic architectural decisions that balance speed, scalability, and maintainability.

• Define patterns and standards for integrations, authentication, webhook handling, observability, and error recovery.

• Build internal tools and dashboards that power operations, analytics, and partner workflows.

• Collaborate closely with product, design, and leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into thoughtful technical solutions.

• Proactively identify technical debt, system risks, and scaling bottlenecks—and drive solutions.

• Mentor engineers through code reviews and technical guidance without stepping into a formal management role.

• Contribute to technical roadmap planning and long-term platform evolution.

What We’re Looking For

• 10+ years of experience as a Full Stack Engineer, with demonstrated ownership of complex systems.

• Experience operating at a Senior+ or Staff-equivalent level in scope and impact.

• Strong experience working with third-party APIs, including authentication (OAuth), rate limits, webhooks, retries, and failure handling.

• Familiarity with ecommerce ecosystems (Shopify apps, payments, subscriptions).

• Proficiency in modern backend and frontend technologies (Node.js, React, TypeScript, Sequelize, Javascript)

• Comfortable working with SQL, ElasticSearch, or vector databases.

• Experience working with event-driven systems or data pipelines.

• Experience designing systems for scalability, performance, and long-term maintainability.

• A product mindset: you think about user impact, edge cases, and business goals

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and iterating quickly in a fast-moving startup environment.

• Clear communicator who can influence technical direction across teams.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• High ownership and real influence on product and technical direction.

• Opportunity to build systems used by hundreds of thousands of students and leading brands.

• Direct access to founders and executive leadership.

• The ability to shape our core architecture and culture during a high-growth phase.

What We Offer

• Competitive annual base compensation

• Equity option award

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• 401(k) plan

• Unlimited PTO

• Laptop and WFH setup reimbursement

• Remote or Hybrid Santa Monica office location