Senior Backend Engineer (Scala)

Who we are

AvantStay delivers exceptional, unique stays for group travelers. The company has built a tech-enabled millennial hospitality brand to be the new standard for group experience. We are venture funded and growing rapidly in the explosive $100+ billion dollar STR industry.

What we are looking for

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer with deep functional programming expertise in Scala who is excited to solve complex production challenges. The right person treats engineering as craft, refining his approach and skills every day, and is motivated by building resilient, high-quality production systems that drive business outcomes and stand the test of time. 

When you join, you’ll collaborate with a team of passionate engineers to build the software that powers both guest experiences and the internal systems behind the scenes. Together, we refine, improve, and maintain the production systems that support tens of thousands of guest stays every month.

Our fully remote team is small, flat, and talent-dense. We are strong advocates of the functional paradigm and write our backend in functional Scala. We also welcome engineers with deep FP experience in languages like Haskell, Clojure, Elm, or Elixir who are eager to work in Scala.

What you’ll do

• Design, build, and maintain production systems that power our core business.
• Work across the stack - from customer-facing features to internal systems.
• Rapidly prototype new ideas to validate opportunities and drive innovation.
• Collaborate closely with product, design, and operations to solve cross-functional problems.
• Write high quality code that serves its purpose well.
• Review code and engage peers to focus on technical quality and pragmatic decision-making.
• Participate in the full development lifecycle — from ideation to post-launch support.
• Help shape our engineering culture and technical direction.

What you’ll bring

• Experience building production-grade FP systems (Scala is preferred, but Haskell/Clojure/Elm is also good if you are excited to dive into Scala)
• Solid understanding of functional programming principles and their practical application in production systems.
• Experience using the Typelevel stack: Scala 2.13+/ Scala 3, along with cats/cats-effect/zio, and related libraries.
• Experience with our infrastructure stack: AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, GraphQL, and PostgreSQL.
• You treat engineering as a craft, refining your skills all the time.
• Fluency in English, both written and spoken, for effective communication in a distributed team.
• Comfortable working in small, fast-paced, product-focused teams with shifting priorities.
• A bias toward action, curiosity to explore unfamiliar tools and patterns, and the ability to work through ambiguity.

We understand that everyone’s path is different. We value agency over experience. If you don’t check every box but bring curiosity, drive, and a clear sense of purpose – we want to hear from you.