Our client is looking for a Staff Engineer who can move confidently across the application stack, cloud services, and foundational system layers. This is not an “architect-in-a-tower” position, it’s a hands-on engineering role for someone who can diagnose, design, and fix complex problems that span multiple domains.

You’ll partner with backend, platform, cloud, and security teams to improve scalability, reliability, and performance. You won’t be living in architecture diagrams all day, but you will influence architecture decisions and help break down high-level designs into practical engineering solutions.

If you thrive in ambiguity, can go from reading logs to troubleshooting distributed systems to advising on application patterns, this is the role for you.

What You’ll Do

Full-Stack Systems Problem Solving

Dive into backend services, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and everything between to remove engineering roadblocks
Diagnose issues in distributed systems: performance bottlenecks, scaling failures, integration gaps
Debug complex failures across microservices, APIs, identity flows, and cloud components

Engineering Leadership

Mentor senior/junior engineers and raise the bar on engineering craft
Serve as a technical “adult in the room” during incidents, releases, and problem escalation
Translate architectural intent into workable engineering plans

Cloud & Platform Engineering

Support and influence cloud patterns, resource design, networking fundamentals, and service integrations
Contribute to Azure-related implementations (App Services, Functions, storage, identity integrations, networking basics)
Improve reliability, performance tuning, and observability within cloud-hosted services

CI/CD, Testing & DevOps Mindset

Improve continuous integration / continuous delivery pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar)
Promote testing maturity: unit, integration, E2E, load, and resilience testing
Advocate for automation-first mindset

IAM & Authorization Fundamentals

Understand how modern apps authenticate and authorize users
Work with OIDC/OAuth2, JWT, RBAC/ABAC
Help teams integrate identity correctly without owning security engineering

Cross-Domain Engineering Influence

Collaborate with architects on system design and scalability discussions
Partner with SRE, Cloud, Security, and Platform teams to improve system-wide reliability
Contribute to incident reviews and long-term remediation strategies

What You Bring

Engineering Breadth

7+ years as a software, systems, platform, or full-stack engineer
Experience in one or more backend software engineering languages - C#/.Net, NodeJS, Python, Java/JVM, Golang, etc.
Comfortable in backend code bases, system internals, cloud integrations, and technical debugging

Cloud Fundamentals

Strong familiarity with Azure (preferred) or other major cloud providers (AWS or GCP), big bonus for multi-cloud experience.
Understanding of: Resource models, networking basics, identity integrations, application hosting patterns, CI/CD pipelines, Observability / monitoring, etc.

System Patterns

Strong understanding of distributed systems principles
Experience with microservices, API-driven architectures, and cloud-native patterns
Solid grounding in reliability concepts (SLOs, failure modes, fault isolation)

Soft Skills

Excels at diagnosing messy technical situations
Communicates clearly across engineering levels
Helps teams simplify and unblock without ego
Thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous environments

Nice-to-Haves

Experience in both Microsoft and non-Microsoft stacks
Familiarity with event-driven systems or async messaging
Experience contributing to architectural reviews
Prior exposure to SRE or platform engineering
Knowledge of container orchestration (AKS, ECS, EKS, K8s in general)

Determining compensation for this role (and others) at Vaco/Highspring depends upon a wide array of factors including but not limited to the individual’s skill sets, experience and training, licensure and certifications, office location and other geographic considerations, as well as other business and organizational needs. With that said, as required by local law in geographies that require salary range disclosure, Vaco/Highspring notes the salary range for the role is noted in this job posting. The individual may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses, and can participate in medical, dental, and vision benefits as well as the company’s 401(k) retirement plan.

Staff Engineer - Application, Cloud & Systems

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