Staff Full Stack Engineer

Location: Distributed - Canada

Thinkific is a software platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses. Our mission is no less than to revolutionize the way people learn and earn online by giving them the tools they need to turn their expertise into a sustainable business that impacts both them and their audience. Our team of 275+ Thinkers supports customers around the globe while working collaboratively to learn, grow, and succeed together. Join us to see how we’re building one of the best workplaces in Canadian tech!

We believe every candidate should have a fair, inclusive, and overall great experience when exploring a new role with Thinkific. That starts with outlining our hiring process so you know what to expect every step of the way—click here to learn more: https://thnk.cc/whattoexpect

We’re looking for a Staff Full Stack Engineer to join us at Thinkific. As a Staff Engineer at Thinkific, you are one of our “power implementers”. You’ll work closely with other Staff Engineers, Principal Engineers and our Lead Architect to shape the technical direction of your domain, while also investing time to coach and mentor other engineers on the team.

We're reimagining learning as a shared, collaborative journey, not just a solo experience. The Communities team is building tools that empower creators to foster meaningful connection, engagement, and ongoing growth within their learning spaces.

You'll be joining at a pivotal moment, helping bring this vision to life as we shape the future of how people learn and grow together.

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 and SLOs related to performance, reliability, security, as well as ongoing architectural evolution and maintenance of this domain and related documentation as it aligns with overall technical strategy and guiding principles.

• Contribute to the overall technical strategy, helping the business make technical decisions by providing high level technical estimates, options, and feasibility opinions, and creating and 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, mentor other engineers to grow and improve the overall team's productivity.

• Be a core implementer for your team, role modeling with clean, efficient, and maintainable code in accordance with best practices, coding and testing standards and be responsible for upholding these standards within your team.

• Participate in on-call rotations, troubleshooting production issues to maintain service reliability.

The person we have in mind likely:

• Has experience working in a staff engineering role

• Has 7+ years of experience working as a software engineer, with 2+ years in a technical leadership position 

• Is an expert in architectural approaches related to the technical domain.

  • Backend: Event-driven architecture, domain-driven design, and multi-tenant systems

  • Frontend: Component libraries and frameworks, design systems, accessibility, internationalization & globalization.

• Understands and is proficient in multiple related languages.

  • Backend: Ruby, Golang, or Node and also has expert-level knowledge of relational and non-relational database technologies such as Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch, DynamoDB

  • Frontend: React, Next.js, Node, TypeScript, GraphQL, HTML, CSS

• Is experienced with asynchronous job processing, using queuing technologies such as SNS, SQS, and Sidekiq

• Love to learn and grow. They’ve found (and keep looking for) ways to level up their skills in this field, whether that’s through formal education, gaining professional experience, or maybe even building their own business 

• 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.

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

• Backend:

  • Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure and streaming technologies such as Kafka, Spark, Kinesis

  • An understanding of how to work with  infrastructure as code technologies, such as Terraform

  • Experience with containers and orchestration via Docker and Kubernetes

• Frontend:

  • Experience with compliance to accessibility standards such as WCAG

The recruitment compensation range for this position is $144,000.00 - $204,000.00. Your specific compensation within this range is determined based on your job-related skills, knowledge, experience, and our internal equity assessment.

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.       

What you can expect if you join Thinkific:

👏 An amazing team of talented, passionate, and kind Thinkers. Together, we’ve built an amazing, award-winning culture—we’re a Certified Great Place to Work and one of Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers!

🚀 The chance to build, improve, and innovate on a platform that’s driving positive impact for thousands of businesses and millions of students around the world.

💸 A competitive compensation package including base salary, equity, team-wide bonuses, and an Employee Share Purchase Plan.

🌴Flexible Paid Time Off to maintain mental and physical health. Our team is encouraged to take a minimum 4 weeks of vacation, plus Thinker Holidays (extended long weekends in the summer) and time off for the December holiday season.

🩺 Health Benefits and Wellness: Comprehensive benefits starting on Day 1 include health, vision, and dental coverage for you and your family, $3,000 for mental health care, a short-term health plan, and an additional health or personal spending account. Plus, family friendly benefits include generous parental leave top-ups for up to 32 weeks, as well as fertility coverage and personalized return to work options. 

💻 Flexible Work. Choose to work from home from anywhere in Canada, at our Vancouver HQ, a co-working space, or anywhere there’s wifi for a change of scenery.

⬆️ Learning & Growth. An annual $1500 USD Learn and Grow fund for conferences, seminars, or courses, plus training, mentorship, coaching, and internal promotion opportunities.

🏡 A home office setup so you’re ready to succeed with a company-owned Macbook Pro and a budget to order a desk, chair, or any accessories to help you work comfortably and productively. 

💙 A place where you can bring your whole self to work. We know that different perspectives lead to amazing ideas, more innovation, and, ultimately, our success as a company. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, identities, and statuses. Whoever you are—we can't wait to meet you!

The Thinkific Vancouver office operates on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations of the Coast Salish People.  We encourage everyone to learn more about the original caretakers of the land that you currently occupy.