Popfly is building the infrastructure for the creator economy. As the leading platform for adventure creators and brands, we’re where collaboration replaces chaos and authentic partnerships replace transactional campaigns. Brands like Zeal Optics, Camp Chef, and The North Face use Popfly to find vetted creators, co-create content, and track performance that drives real revenue. Creators use us to connect with brands they love, manage their workflow, and get paid.

We’re a fast-scaling startup with proven product-market fit, now racing from thousands to millions of users. Our lean, talented engineering team has built a sophisticated platform powering everything from creator-brand matching to real-time collaboration, payments, and analytics—all purpose-built for the adventure space. We value speed over perfection and pragmatic excellence over complexity. We’re not just building software; we’re building the connected creator ecosystem that defines the future of brand storytelling.

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer who thrives in the 0→100 phase of a hyper-growth startup. You’ll grow into a technical co-leader—owning domains, architecting scalable systems, and elevating those around you.

This isn’t a typical engineering role. Expect to spend your time:

🧩 50% building algorithms & AI features — from creator-brand matching to analytics pipelines
⚙️ 25% evolving our platform — scaling architecture, containerization, and future migrations (Heroku → AWS)
🧭 25% leading technically — shaping architecture and guiding engineers
💡 And another 50% imagining what’s next — prototyping, innovating, and solving problems before anyone else sees them

What You’ll OwnAlgorithms & Intelligence

Own the lifecycle of AI features: problem framing, data sourcing, prototype, offline/online evals, launch, and post-launch iteration.
Establish evaluation harnesses and dashboards for precision/recall, success rate, and latency.
Partner with product to set success metrics for matching, recommendations, and creator-brand search quality.

Platform & Infrastructure

Lead our AWS migration from Heroku and architect cost-effective, scalable multi-environment infrastructure
Containerize our .NET applications using Docker/Kubernetes for better resource management and deployment velocity
Design and implement horizontal scaling strategies for our API layer as we grow from thousands to millions of requests
Optimize SQL Server performance and evaluate data architecture decisions
Own monitoring, observability, and incident response infrastructure

Technical Leadership

Collaborate with the Lead Engineer to guide the team through code reviews, architectural decisions, and quality control
Make high-leverage decisions: when to extract microservices, when to refactor vs. rebuild, and when “good enough” is actually right
Champion engineering best practices while understanding startup trade-offs - we ship fast, but we ship with quality
Bridge between product/design vision and technical execution

Our Stack

Backend: .NET Core, C#, EF Core, MSSQL Server
Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, MUI
Infrastructure: Heroku, Azure, AWS, RabbitMQ
Key integrations: Shopify, Stripe, Autumn, Algolia, Phyllo, Cloudinary, TalkJS, Liveblocks, Knock, SendGrid, Datadog
AI: OpenAI/Anthropic, LangChain/LangGraph, pgvector or Weaviate, Python for notebooks and evals

Must-Haves

4+ years of software engineering experience
Proficiency in .NET, C#, MSSQL, and React/Next.js
Strong grasp of algorithms, data structures, and design patterns
Experience building or integrating AI-driven systems (search, recommendations, ranking, or matching), including hands-on use of LLM tools (OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain) and vector search workflows (RAG, embeddings)
Data-driven mindset — comfortable defining metrics, running experiments, and iterating on results
Solid understanding of DevOps and cloud infrastructure
Proven technical leadership with architectural and strategic decision-making experience
Startup mentality — adaptable, fast-moving, and energized by building from 0→1
You love leveraging AI tools like Cursor to enhance your productivity

Nice-to-Haves

Containerization experience (Docker production; Kubernetes/ES)
Recsys or marketplace matching experience.
Feature stores, offline/online evaluation, and feedback loops.
Familiarity with Pinecone/Weaviate/pgvector, and job/data pipelines (Dagster/Airflow).
Safety, abuse, and prompt-injection mitigation for user-facing AI features.

What We Offer

💰 Competitive salary: $135K–$160K (based on experience, skill, and location)

🚀 Autonomy & ownership: Influence technical direction and the future of our company

🧠 Modern stack: Work with well-supported, forward-looking technologies

🌍 Remote-friendly culture: In-person or hybrid preferred, but output > location

🎯 Impact: Your work directly shapes the experience of thousands of creators and brands

📈 Growth: Join a company scaling at an incredible pace

💪 Flexible health benefits: Customizable healthcare reimbursement to fit your needs

🌴 Generous PTO: Recharge and explore whenever you need it

Our Engineering Culture

Ship with quality, but ship fast - we iterate based on real user feedback
Consistency compounds - we favor uniform “good enough” patterns
Fail fast - clear error handling, early returns, structured logging
Readable over clever - clarity beats complexity
Test what matters - unit tests for business logic, integration/E2E for critical flows
See a problem, own the problem - ownership extends beyond titles

Ready to Build Something Extraordinary?

If this sounds like you and you’re excited about joining our fast-growing startup, then we want to hear from you!

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