Staff Engineer, Full Stack (US, Canada, SF)

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