Staff Engineer, Full Stack (San Francisco)

Our Story:

Short Story is an award winning, technology-powered retailer dedicated to petite women 5'4" and under. Our mission is to create a seamless shopping experience for millions of petite women so they can dress with effortless confidence.

As a fast-growing startup, we're revolutionizing retail with a data-driven learning system that leverages customer feedback to create tailored products. We've been recognized by top publications like Forbes, Fortune and are backed by top investors who share our vision of building the world's next great consumer brand.

Our Values:

We're building a company with intention and purpose. Our culture thrives on data insights, exceptional commitment to fit, and the urgency to move quickly on what matters.

• ✨ Transform Lives. We're customer-first. Everything we create exists to give her confidence.
• ⚡️ Demand Excellence. We deliver only our best work, in Fit and Finish. We obsess about details others overlook.
• 💪 Embrace Challenges. We see obstacles as opportunities to invent better solutions.
• 💡 Think Differently. We get a thrill from finding better solutions others haven't seen.

Short Story Engineering:

As a fast-growing startup with team members across the globe, we’re scrappy, data-driven, and deeply customer-obsessed. Our team includes engineers, stylists, product thinkers, and storytellers—all working together to make shopping feel personal again.

At Short Story, everyone is empowered to contribute ideas, challenge the status quo, and take ownership. We keep our decision-making lean and our feedback loops tight, because the best solutions come from those closest to the work.

Our Product:

Short Story is a wardrobe-as-a-service that connects petite women with clothing that actually fits. Behind the scenes, our tools enable stylists to deliver personalized recommendations, while our logistics and warehouse tech ensure fast, seamless order handling. With a mix of internal and customer-facing platforms, we’re building thoughtful, elegant systems to power our growth—and that’s where you come in.

The Role:

As one of the earliest engineers at Short Story, this is a high-impact opportunity to shape our technology, product experience, and engineering culture. You’ll work end-to-end across both customer-facing and internal platforms, building the tools our customers and stylists rely on every day. From designing resilient backend services to scaling design systems and refining order flows, you’ll play a central role in how we deliver style and customer happiness at scale.

At this stage of our company, a Staff Engineer isn’t just a strong coder — you’re a technical leader, problem solver, and multiplier. You’ll collaborate closely with designers, PMs, and operators, but also look around corners: identifying bottlenecks, shaping architectural decisions, and driving the engineering culture that will set us up for the next chapter of growth.

What You'll Do:

• Design, build, and scale full-stack applications with technologies like Next.js, React Query, TailwindCSS, Node.js, and PostgreSQL.
• Drive technical direction : influence architecture, make trade-offs, and establish engineering standards that balance speed and scalability.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with design, product, and operations to deliver solutions end-to-end, from UI to backend services.
• Translate Figma designs into seamless, interactive experiences while ensuring backend integrations are robust and performant.
• Use data to drive impact : A/B test, instrument, and iterate to improve user experience and business outcomes.
• Multiply team effectiveness : mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and raise the technical bar.
• Ensure quality and reliability : drive testing and automation across the stack (Cypress, Jest, React Testing Library, integration tests).
• Own deployment and operations : manage apps on Netlify, AWS, or equivalent, and build CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions.
• Champion engineering culture : set standards around performance, security, accessibility, and technical excellence.

Must Haves:

• You are passionate about improving the user experience and have built and launched high-quality user-facing products.
• You’re fluent in TypeScript and CSS, and have extensive experience building scalable applications using NextJS and ReactJS
• You have hands-on experience with React-Query, Tailwind CSS, and front-end tooling like Webpack and Yarn
• You’ve worked in collaborative development environments using Git and GitHub
• You’ve translated designs from Figma into elegant and accessible interfaces across multiple devices and browsers
• You are able to establish testing practices and methodologies for the team
• You understand how to optimize front-end performance and build for scalability
• You’re thoughtful about documentation, communication, and team enablement
• You thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where you can own solutions end-to-end
• You’re excited by ambiguity and love solving complex problems from end to end

Nice to Haves:

• You have 5+ years of experience in professional front-end development
• Experience working in a fast-moving startup environment
• Experience integrating/building component systems and libraries for large codebases
• Have experience with server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG)
• Have worked on sprint-based teams using OKRs or similar frameworks
• Have experience working remotely with global teams
• Have led or built a front-end engineering team before
• Have contributed to open-source or have a strong portfolio of personal project

Location:

• We are hiring in San Francisco
• Work in-office in Potrero, San Francisco

Compensation and Benefits:

• Comprehensive health, vision, and dental care
• 401k with company match (US)
• Generous paid time off
• Opportunity to work at a Y-Combinator backed startup alongside a dedicated and experienced founding team
• Company wide and team events

Why You'll Love Working at Short Story:

• You'll get to work at an early stage start-up, to build the culture, and to have an outsized impact on our company and society
• You'll be a key part of the company with the ability to make high impact decisions
• You'll get the opportunity to try your hand at new things. We deeply believe in giving people opportunity to venture into new areas
• We are a successful, fast-growing startup solving problems that have not been solved before and reinventing fashion for an underserved segment
• We are a group of smart, passionate hackers with a wealth of diverse experiences
• We are motivated by unique challenges and opportunities
• We are driven by the mission of helping petite women find their perfect fit so they can dress with total confidence

Short Story is committed to providing equal employment opportunity and a work environment free of discrimination and harassment for all employees and applicants. We work diligently to ensure equal opportunity for all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics.