Software Engineer

Hybrid work in Tempe, AZ with competitive benefits and a collaborative environment. Synapse Studios is seeking a senior software engineer who leans backend while delivering across the full stack to build a modern internal platform for enterprise-grade software and AI-enabled products. You will own end-to-end delivery from design through production, with a focus on reliable, autonomous systems and production-ready behavior.

Responsibilities

• Architect, implement, verify, and release robust software that underpins the development of customer-facing products.
• Own features end-to-end from concept through live operation.
• Lead backend work end-to-end, including API design, data modeling, and integrations with databases, messaging queues, and external systems.
• Develop product-facing frontend end-to-end, covering component structure, state management, and API integration.
• Break down large initiatives into manageable epics and prioritized work for incremental delivery.
• Lead system and software design discussions, weighing tradeoffs, boundaries, and long-term maintainability.
• Deliver frequent production changes via modern CI/CD pipelines and trunk-based development.
• Create automated tests across unit, integration, and where appropriate end-to-end levels to enable safe continuous delivery.
• Contribute to and improve DevOps practices, including build pipelines, deployment automation, and environment consistency.
• Diagnose and resolve production issues using logs, metrics, and monitoring tools.
• Actively monitor the behavior of systems you build and respond to failures or regressions.
• Improve reliability, performance, and maintainability through refactoring and incremental debt reduction.
• Mentor teammates, conduct thoughtful code reviews, and help engineers grow into more complex work.
• Collaborate closely with engineers, product partners, and clients to solve ambiguous problems, and clearly communicate tradeoffs, progress, and risk to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Use modern development tools effectively, including AI-assisted tooling, where appropriate.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong backend focus and comfort across the full stack.
• Solid foundation in software engineering fundamentals, including system design, API and data modeling, testing, debugging, and code quality.
• Experience designing, building, and operating production systems end-to-end.
• Experience scoping and planning large bodies of work and breaking them down for incremental delivery.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and continuous delivery practices.
• Working knowledge of DevOps concepts such as deployment automation, environment consistency, and observability.
• Ability to operate effectively in environments with evolving requirements and limited upfront specification.
• Comfort taking ownership of outcomes, including production behavior, reliability, and ongoing improvement.
• Experience mentoring or leveling up other engineers, and communicating technical tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code) as a regular part of your workflow; this is part of daily practice.
• Strong engineering fundamentals to review, reason about, and own the code you ship, regardless of how it was generated.
• Relational databases experience (3 years preferred).

Technologies

• Node with TypeScript for backend services
• NestJS
• React with TypeScript (Vite and Next)
• AWS
• Docker
• ECS
• Terraform
• Playwright

Benefits

• 401(k)
• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Flexible spending account
• Health insurance
• Health savings account
• Paid time off
• Parental leave
• Referral program

Location

Tempe, AZ (hybrid) 85281

Application questions

• On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate yourself as a backend developer?
• On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate yourself as a frontend developer?