Staff Engineer

What We Do 

Poplin is the first and largest peer-to-peer marketplace for laundry. Our customers tap the app and outsource their laundry. For them, it’s life without laundry, because we hacked it out of existence. But Poplin solves a second problem too, which is that more and more people of varying backgrounds want to work from home. Luckily most people have an underutilized washer/dryer, which when combined with Poplin’s Laundry Pro app, provides the first-ever manual labor work-from-home gig in the world. 

For all our users, Poplin is a marketplace for a better life. 

Our Progress 

Perfect product market fit drove a 100x surge in users & revenue and double-digit MoM growth over the past few years. In 2021 Poplin scaled to 500+ markets throughout the United States. In March 2022 we closed a $10m seed round which included VC investments from Headline, Origin Ventures, Starting Line VC, Ludlow Ventures, and Clean Ventures, as well as notable angel investments from Max Mullen, co-founder of Instacart, Steven Galanis, Co-founder and CEO of Cameo, Joanna Riley, CEO and co-founder of Censia, and Rob Chesnut, Chief Ethics Officer for airbnb. Significant growth continued in 2022 and 2023. 

The Role 

You won’t just write code—you’ll shape the architectural vision that powers the entire Poplin ecosystem. As our Staff Engineer, you’ll partner with our Head of Engineering to orchestrate large-scale, highly available systems, set new standards for code quality, and push the envelope of technical innovation. You’ll be the guiding force that ensures our platform remains lightning-fast, secure, and endlessly scalable. 

What You’ll Do: 

• Architect the Future: Design and implement distributed systems, microservices, and advanced database strategies (think sharding, partitioning, replication) that form the backbone of our web and mobile products.

• Build at Scale: Develop both front-end and back-end solutions in TypeScript. Your code will power seamless experiences for customers and Laundry Pros across iOS, Android, and the web. 

• Champion Excellence: Establish best practices for security, performance optimization, and monitoring. You’ll make sure our product isn’t just good—it’s world-class.

• Lead & Mentor: Guide cross-functional teams, mentor engineers, and provide strategic technical direction. You’ll influence major decisions and shape Poplin’s engineering roadmap. 

• Push Product Velocity: Execute ambitious product goals—like dynamic geo-pricing or international expansion—while keeping the codebase clean, stable, and blazing fast.

• Stay Hands-On: You love coding. You’ll spend most of your time in the trenches, building new features and ensuring our platform evolves at lightspeed. 

Here’s How You’ll Leave Your Mark: 

• Architectural Wizardry: You’ll spearhead system designs that handle high traffic, maintain uptime, and support fast-growing user demands. 

• Quality Evangelist: Through code reviews and pair programming, you’ll level up the entire team’s technical bar—no spaghetti code on your watch! 

• Technical Visionary: Collaborate with product and design to translate big ideas into robust, scalable solutions that keep us on the cutting edge. 

• Operational Maestro: Implement monitoring, alerting, and incident response strategies so we can squash bugs and anomalies before users even notice. 

• Innovation Engine: Spot opportunities to adopt new tools or refine existing processes, fueling our culture of continuous improvement. 

What You’ll Bring to the Table: 

• Seasoned Coder: 10+ years of active coding experience (and counting). You’re a TypeScript pro, but you’re equally comfortable exploring new languages when the problem calls for it. 

• System Design Sage: Mastery of architecture principles, deep understanding of system design patterns, and advanced data modeling. You can handle the toughest scaling challenges in your sleep. 

• Cloud Know-How: You’ve deployed, monitored, and maintained services on platforms like AWS and GCP, as well as managed infrastructures like Firebase—and you can spin up infrastructure without breaking a sweat. 

• Leadership DNA: You’ve guided teams, mentored engineers, and influenced tech decisions in previous roles. People trust your judgment and rally behind your direction.

• High-Velocity Mindset: You thrive in a fast-paced, async environment and see obstacles as fuel for creative solutions. 

• Startup Spirit: You’re self-directed, love taking ownership, and believe that “no” is just the starting point for “how.” 

• Performance Tuner: You’ve built large-scale, low-latency systems and have the battle scars to prove it. 

• DevOps Wizardry: Containerization, orchestration, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code—if you know it, we want it. 

• Global Expansion Experience: If you’ve scaled products across borders—like rolling out dynamic, geo-based features—you’ll fit right in. 

Poplin’s Tech Stack

Our tech stack is mostly TypeScript, allowing engineers to implement end-to-end functionality. On the frontend we use Angular/Ionic and on the backend Firebase. 

Why You’ll Love Working with Us 

• Early Impact: You’ll be one of the first employees at a fast-growing startup. Your fingerprints will be all over Poplin’s data universe. 

• Rocket Growth: We’re experiencing explosive expansion—be part of the journey and watch your own career soar. 

• Shape Our Culture: Help define our values, collaborate on world-class practices, and influence who we hire next. 

• Endless Opportunities: As we grow, you grow. The sky’s the limit for your career trajectory. 

• Mission-Driven Team: We work hard, innovate nonstop, and serve our community of users with passion. 

• Compensation & Perks: Competitive base salary, equity package, benefits—and the freedom to work where and when you do your best work. 

Location 

Remote (with a 9am Central Time daily standup, and at least 5 hours overlapping CST) 

Poplin asks respectfully to only apply through the application form and not email/apply to them directly. Recruiters and Agencies please do not contact Poplin directly.