Staff Engineer (Ingeniero Staff) - Remote First

<div class="content-intro"><p><strong>Clara is the leading spend management platform in Latin America.</strong> More than 40,000 businesses run on our corporate cards, bill pay, financing and B2B payments, and in 2025 the Financial Times named Clara the fastest-growing company in Latin America. We're ~400 people, backed by Kaszek, monashees, Coatue, DST Global, ICONIQ, General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs, among others.</p></div><p>We are looking for a <strong>Staff Engineer</strong> to provide senior individual-contributor technical leadership at Clara. This is an organization-level IC role: you shape architecture, raise engineering standards across pods, and multiply impact through design, code, and mentorship — <strong>not</strong> a people-manager position.</p> <h2>The Role</h2> <p>You are a builder and a technical authority beyond a single pod. You still write production code regularly, but your scope is cross-team: systems that span services, shared platforms, and hard technical bets that unlock multiple product areas.</p> <p><strong>This is a builder's role first.</strong> You are expected to ship code, lead by example in reviews and design docs, and leave clearer systems behind you — not only facilitate meetings.</p> <h3>What You Own</h3> <ul> <li><strong>Cross-team architecture</strong> — Drive system design for initiatives that cut across pods (APIs, data models, event flows, reliability patterns). Hold a high bar on coherence, operability, and long-term cost.</li> <li><strong>Engineering excellence</strong> — Set and model standards for code quality, testing (TDD/BDD), observability, and secure design. Influence through RFCs, architecture reviews, and pairing — not through reporting lines.</li> <li><strong>Technical strategy</strong> — Partner with Engineering Directors, Pod Leads, and Product on sequencing, tech debt, and platform investments. Make trade-offs explicit and documented.</li> <li><strong>Mentorship &amp; leveling-up</strong> — Grow Senior and Mid engineers via design reviews, deep pairing, and hiring signal. You provide strong input on technical fit; managers own career and performance outcomes.</li> <li><strong>Incident and reliability leadership</strong> — Lead or co-lead response and remediation for high-severity incidents on systems you influence; drive durable fixes, not band-aids.</li> <li><strong>Hands-on delivery</strong> — Author meaningful PRs. Staff at Clara is not an architecture-only title.</li> </ul> <h3>What You Don't Own</h3> <ul> <li>1:1s, performance ratings, compensation, or PIPs — those belong to Engineering Managers / Directors.</li> <li>Day-to-day sprint facilitation for a single pod (unless temporarily embedded); Pod Engineering Leads own pod execution rhythm.</li> </ul> <h2>Technical Skills</h2> <ul> <li>8+ years of professional software engineering, including substantial time as a Senior / Lead IC on complex systems.</li> <li>Deep expertise in at least one of: <ul> <li><strong>Backend:</strong> Java (Spring / Spring Boot), microservices, scalable system design, PostgreSQL/MySQL and NoSQL data modeling, event-driven architectures (Kafka or similar), REST APIs, AWS, containers (Docker/Kubernetes).</li> <li><strong>Frontend:</strong> Production React + TypeScript at scale, component architecture, performance, testing (Jest, RTL, Cypress/Playwright), build/CI tooling.</li> </ul> </li> <li>Ability to work and reason <strong>full-stack</strong> even if your depth is on one side: read the whole path from data model to API to UI.</li> <li>Proven experience designing for high availability, security, and operability in production.</li> <li>Strong testing culture (unit, integration, contract) and familiarity with CI/CD (GitHub Actions).</li> <li>Track record of written technical design that non-authors can challenge and execute against.</li> </ul> <h2>Soft Skills</h2> <ul> <li>Demonstrated influence <strong>without</strong> formal authority — across teams and stakeholders.</li> <li>Clear communication of trade-offs to Product, Design, and leadership.</li> <li>Product mindset: you engage roadmaps and feasibility, not only tickets.</li> <li>Intellectual honesty: change direction when evidence demands it.</li> <li>Mentorship instincts; you leave teams stronger than you found them.</li> <li>Strong English; Spanish is a plus for LATAM collaboration.</li> </ul> <h2>Nice-to-Have</h2> <ul> <li>Experience in financial applications, payments, or regulated LATAM markets.</li> <li>Prior Staff / Principal / Staff-equivalent title, or org-wide Tech Lead scope.</li> <li>Platform or developer-experience investments (shared libraries, internal tools, AI-assisted engineering workflows).</li> <li>Deep AWS (EKS, RDS, MSK, etc.) or security posture work (auth, supply chain).</li> </ul> <p></p><div class="content-conclusion"><h2>Why Clara</h2> <ul> <li><strong>A high talent-density team</strong> driven to make an impact in Latin America — low ego, high ownership.</li> <li>Competitive salary and stock options (ESOP) from day one.</li> <li>An annual learning budget and accelerated development paths.</li> <li>English is our working language, with Spanish and Portuguese every day.</li> </ul> <h2>How we work</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Clarity</strong> — Open and direct communication: we say what we mean and give context where it matters.</li> <li><strong>Simplicity</strong> — If it can be simpler, it should be.</li> <li><strong>Ownership</strong> — We own everything we do, end to end. When something needs to happen, we don't wait.</li> <li><strong>Pride</strong> — We hold ourselves to a high standard, and it shows in what we deliver.</li> <li><strong>ABC (Always Be Changing)</strong> — We adapt fast, embrace change, and keep learning.</li> <li><strong>Inclusivity</strong> — Diverse ideas, stories and perspectives build a better Clara.</li> </ul> <h2>Hybrid at Clara</h2> <p>Claridians split their time between the office, customers and home. We don't set a minimum number of office days for most roles, but we expect you to spend time there naturally, and most days during your ramp-up or when your leader asks.</p> <p>If you meet the must-haves, apply — the nice-to-haves are a bonus, not a requirement.</p></div>