Staff Software Engineer

Evolve is seeking a talented Staff Software Engineer to join their dedicated team, contributing to their mission of simplifying vacation rentals. This is a fully remote position based in the US, offering an opportunity to make a significant impact within a company that values curiosity, communication, and accountability. Evolve fosters a culture where employees are encouraged to thrive and contribute meaningfully to exceptional experiences for both property owners and guests.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer at Evolve, you will be instrumental in shaping the future of their technology platform. This role goes beyond traditional coding; it involves leading strategic initiatives in DevOps, security, and infrastructure reliability. You'll be a key player in driving innovation and ensuring the robustness and scalability of Evolve's systems. This position requires a forward-thinking individual who can not only implement solutions but also define architectural direction and champion best practices across the engineering organisation.

Your responsibilities will span several critical areas, aiming to enhance Evolve's platform and development processes:

• **Drive DevOps Transformation:** You will lead the design and optimisation of CI/CD pipelines, developing container orchestration strategies, particularly with Kubernetes. The goal is to establish scalable patterns that streamline the journey from code creation to production deployment, reducing friction for development teams.
• **Champion Security-First Culture:** Architecting secure infrastructure by default will be a primary focus. This includes implementing robust secrets management, ensuring IAM adheres to least-privilege principles, integrating vulnerability scanning, and embedding compliance controls as enabling guardrails rather than restrictive gates.
• **Leverage AI Tooling:** You will apply AI-assisted development tools strategically to accelerate platform work. Crucially, you will also model and promote the critical evaluation practices necessary to use these tools effectively and responsibly.
• **Own Platform Reliability:** Take end-to-end ownership of infrastructure reliability. This involves setting and driving Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for critical business infrastructure, leading incident response efforts, and systematically reducing Mean Time To Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time To Resolve (MTTR).
• **Lead Infrastructure as Code (IaC) at Scale:** Design and implement scalable, reusable IaC modules, likely using tools such as Terraform or Pulumi, to embed and enforce organisational standards for infrastructure management.
• **Define and Drive Architectural Direction:** Serve as a primary decision-maker for platform architecture, influencing and guiding technical direction across multiple teams and domains within Evolve.
• **Deliver High-Leverage Solutions:** Stay abreast of emerging technologies and identify opportunities to deliver solutions that offer significant impact and efficiency gains.

What They're Looking For

Evolve is seeking an experienced engineer with a proven track record in software engineering and platform architecture. Ideal candidates will possess:

• Extensive experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on platform development and architecture.
• Proficiency in DevOps tooling and practices, including CI/CD, containerisation, and cloud infrastructure management.
• A deep understanding of security best practices and experience in architecting secure systems.
• Demonstrated experience with AI tooling and platforms, understanding their application in software development.
• The ability to thrive in a remote and asynchronous work environment, demonstrating strong communication and self-management skills.
• A commitment to customer satisfaction, teamwork, and continuous growth, aligning with Evolve's core values.

In South Africa, roles at this senior engineering level often command competitive salaries, reflecting the demand for specialised skills. Companies that invest in robust platform engineering, such as Evolve aims to be, are often found in the travel tech, e-commerce, and SaaS sectors. Career progression typically involves moving into principal engineering roles, architecture leadership, or management positions within engineering teams.

• Extensive experience in software engineering and platform architecture.
• Proficient in DevOps tooling and practices.
• Strong knowledge of security best practices.
• Experience with AI tooling and platforms.
• Ability to work in a remote and asynchronous environment.