Staff Engineer (Architect Track)

Position Overview

Paladin is seeking a Staff Engineer (Architect Track) to drive the technical architecture, design patterns, and engineering excellence behind our industry-leading platform empowering law firms, legal departments, and other organizations to run world-class pro bono programs. This senior technical leadership role focuses on shaping how our systems are built, mentoring engineers, and maintaining a high standard of quality as we scale.

You’ll collaborate with mid-level and senior engineers to design, document, and execute technical initiatives, while staying hands-on with our stack: PostgreSQL, Django, React, and Heroku. We're looking for someone who has built and scaled B2B SaaS platforms, especially those with complex data models and data-forward products, without losing the pragmatism and velocity of a startup environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Architecture: Lead the design and evolution of application and data architectures across our core platform.
• Design Documentation: Collaborate with engineers to write Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and detailed build plans for major initiatives.
• Technical Leadership: Drive standards for testing, documentation, deployment practices, and technical design patterns.
• Hands-on Contribution: Build critical systems and proof-of-concepts alongside mid-level and senior engineers.
• Data Ownership: Design and guide database schemas, migrations, and best practices for data modeling and integrity.
• DevOps Collaboration: Work with the team to ensure reliable deployment pipelines, monitoring, and operational excellence within Heroku and adjacent services.
• Mentorship: Support and elevate engineering teammates through code reviews, technical design feedback, and informal coaching.
• Continuous Improvement: Identify and champion opportunities to improve technical processes, scalability, and maintainability.

Ideal Background and Skills

• 8+ years of professional software development experience, with 3+ years in technical leadership roles (Staff, Lead Engineer, Architect, etc.)
• Deep expertise in:
• PostgreSQL schema design, optimization, and data migrations
• Django and the broader Python web ecosystem
• GraphQL and REST APIs, preferably using Graphene-Django and Django REST Framework (DRF) for internal and customer-facing APIs.
• React and the broader TypeScript ecosystem for building maintainable, scalable frontend systems
• Experience designing and evolving complex data-forward B2B SaaS platforms, ideally involving data analytics, workflows, permissions, or multi-tenant data models.
• Knowledge of schema design for data insights and reporting use cases, with strong database knowledge such as dimensional modeling, indexing, query optimization, and data integrity patterns.
• Strong experience deploying applications on Heroku and AWS, or similar PaaS/IaaS environments.
• Exceptional written communication skills, especially in technical documentation and design artifacts using tools like Notion, Figma, ReadTheDocs, or Storybook.
• Demonstrated experience leading testing strategies (unit, integration, E2E) using tools like Python unittest, Jest, and Cypress to ensure system reliability
• Strong understanding of modern security frameworks, including OWASP guidelines, SOC 2, and ISO standards.
• Skilled at balancing technical ambition with pragmatic delivery — able to design systems that scale without over-engineering.

Nice to Have

• Experience working in legal tech, social impact, or access to justice platforms.
• Prior experience contributing to or leading DevOps initiatives (CI/CD optimization, infrastructure as code, observability practices).
• Experience designing and operating data pipelines and ETL systems; familiarity with data warehousing tools such as DBT, Redshift, and PostgreSQL.
• Experience implementing modern frontend tooling such as Vite and advanced TypeScript practices.
• Working knowledge of modern privacy laws, such as GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA, or similar compliance environments.
• Exposure to security incident response planning or threat modeling for small engineering teams.
• Contributions to open-source projects or public technical writing/speaking are a plus.

Our Website

Find us at: Joinpaladin.com

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $180,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Parental leave
• Vision insurance

Schedule:

• Monday to Friday

Application Question(s):

• What interests you most about this role and our company? Why do you believe it’s a good fit for your skills and goals?
• Give an example of a technical architecture or platform decision you led. How did you structure the decision-making process, and what documentation (e.g., ADRs, RFCs, Requirement Specs) did you produce to guide the team?
• When designing a GraphQL or REST API, how do you decide how much data to expose on a given query or endpoint? Provide an example of a real tradeoff you encountered (e.g., performance, security, frontend needs) and how you handled it.

Work Location: Remote