Staff Full Stack Engineer

Can you architect scalable, reliable systems while mentoring others to reach their technical best? We're looking for a Staff Full Stack Engineer to join our new AI Learner Engagement team at Thinkific. 

In this role, you'll lead the design and implementation of high-impact technical solutions, set architectural direction, and ensure our AI-powered learner engagement systems scale effectively for a growing global customer base. You'll shape best practices, addressing complex engineering problems, and clearing blockers for high-priority work. This will enable us to deliver AI-driven product experiences that businesses can trust as they grow. Reporting to the Senior Engineering Manager, you'll work closely with other Staff Engineers, Principal Engineers, and Engineering Leadership to advance our technical strategy.

Your goal will be to help guide and execute on projects related to your technical domain. Here's how you'll accomplish this:

• Own a technical domain within our system and be accountable for operations, SLOs, and architectural evolution, ensuring the systems you own effectively support AI-powered learner engagement across the platform
• Contribute to the overall technical strategy by helping the business make informed technical decisions through high-level estimates, options, and feasibility assessments
• Contribute to technical direction by reviewing proposals for new technologies, patterns, and implementations
• Collaborate with engineering managers, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to define requirements and specifications for software projects
• Advocate for engineering best practices by sharing knowledge, teaching others new skills, and contributing to improving engineering standards, tooling, and processes
• Lead technical discussions and mentor other engineers to support growth and improve the overall team's productivity
• Be a core implementer for your team, role-modelling clean, efficient, and maintainable code in alignment with best practices, coding standards, and testing standards, and uphold these standards within the team
• Participate in on-call rotations, troubleshooting production issues to maintain service reliability

The person we have in mind likely:

• Has 7 or more years of experience as a Software Engineer, including at least 2 years in a Staff Engineer or equivalent technical leadership position
• Has deep architectural expertise in their domain, including event-driven systems, domain-driven design, and multi-tenant architectures
• Understands component architectures, design systems, accessibility, and internationalization
• Experience with modern backend frameworks including Ruby on Rails or
• Has experience with asynchronous job processing and queuing technologies such as SNS, SQS, BullMQ and Sidekiq
• Has experience with machine learning and/or building products leveraging deep learning
• Leverages AI tools to ideate, improve engineering productivity, and support others in adopting AI effectively
• Has experience designing or scaling production AI features, and is motivated to apply that expertise to deepen learner engagement on the platform
• Combines strong product thinking with adaptability, ownership, and collaborative leadership. They know when to lead, when to listen, and how to elevate the team around them
• Loves to learn and grow, continuously  levelling up their skills in this field, whether that's through formal education, gaining professional experience, or even building their own business 
• Thrive in ambiguity and change and can help others adapt with change

These things would also be nice, but we think you could learn them on the job: 

• Backend
  • Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure 
  • Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform
  • Experience with containers and orchestration using Docker or Kubernetes
  • Experience building rules engines that drive consumer behaviour
• Frontend
  • Experience implementing accessibility standards such as WCAG

While we welcome applicants from across Canada, please note that we have a strong preference for candidates located in the Eastern to Atlantic time zones to ensure optimal overlap.

We're committed to fair and transparent pay that reflects both where you are and where you can grow to. This role has a salary range of $148,000 - $222,000 in Canada, designed to capture the full journey from developing skills to excelling in the position. Salaries above the midpoint are typically reserved for team members who have demonstrated strong, consistent performance, deep expertise, and a significant positive impact within the role.

For high-demand or hard-to-fill positions like this one, we may hire above midpoint for candidates who bring exceptional experience, skills, or impact potential.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging & Accessibility

This is just our initial idea of who we're looking for At Thinkific, we know that people have unique career journeys. If your experience is close to what we've described but you feel that you might be missing a few of the requirements, please still apply We believe in equal opportunity and are committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging across every facet of our business.

We're also committed to providing a comfortable and accessible interview experience for every candidate. If there are any accommodations our team can make throughout our hiring process (big or small), please let us know. 

Interested in learning more about the AI work driving Thinkific's culture of innovation? Check out this post written by our Senior Engineering Manager for the AI team, linked here.