Hauler Hero is a leading waste management SaaS platform serving haulers and waste management companies. We build modern technology that transforms how the industry operates, from route optimization to billing and customer management.
We’ve achieved product-market fit and are now scaling the platform to support rapid customer growth.
We’re hiring a Principal Backend Engineer to help scale a proven production system through its next major growth phase.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You’ll inherit a functioning platform and be responsible for identifying bottlenecks, improving performance, evolving architecture, and ensuring our backend and data systems scale reliably as the business grows.
You’ll work closely with the Head of Engineering and existing principal engineers to shape technical direction. Expect to spend the majority of your time writing and shipping production code.
AI-First Engineering
We extensively use AI tools in our daily development workflow. As a principal engineer, you'll:
Use AI for code implementation while owning architecture, design, and technical standards
Validate all AI-generated solutions for correctness, scalability, and edge cases
Mentor the team on effective AI usage and critical thinking
What we're looking for:
Engineers excited about AI-assisted development who can establish best practices
Strong technical leaders who understand that AI speed doesn't mean lower standards
Principal engineers who will guide the team through this transition
Not a fit:
Engineers resistant to AI-assisted development or unwilling to use it daily
Those who blindly accept AI output without validating it
You’ve scaled real production systems through significant growth phases
You’ve solved PostgreSQL performance and scaling challenges
Other engineers seek your architectural guidance
You’ve made long-term architectural decisions with company-wide impact
You can clearly articulate tradeoffs between multiple valid approaches
You’ve mentored senior engineers and elevated team capability
You bring deep expertise, not just familiarity, in your core technologies
Scale backend services and PostgreSQL to support continued growth
Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks across the stack
Design and evolve data models for new features and increased load
Lead architectural decisions that shape the platform long term
Establish engineering patterns and best practices
Write and ship production code in Java and Kotlin using Spring Boot
Own features end-to-end from design through production and on-call
Mentor and elevate other engineers
8+ years backend engineering experience
2+ years operating at staff or principal scope
Deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot
Deep PostgreSQL expertise, including:
Query optimization for high-volume workloads
Multi-tenant SaaS schema design
Partitioning and data lifecycle strategies
Performance tuning (indexing, EXPLAIN ANALYZE)
Connection pooling and operational scaling
Proven experience scaling existing systems
Cloud experience (GCP preferred, AWS acceptable)
Strong understanding of distributed systems and microservices
CI/CD and production operations experience
Strong communication and mentoring skills
Messaging and notification systems (SendGrid, Twilio, or similar)
Geospatial or location-based services
Event-driven or streaming architectures
Payment or fintech integrations
Backend: Java, Kotlin, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL
Cloud: Google Cloud Platform
Caching: Redis, Firestore
Frontend: React
Mobile: Native Android
Impact: Own the technical challenges of scaling a platform during a critical growth phase
Growth: Work on complex scaling problems with direct business impact
Team: Join a collaborative engineering team that values quality and continuous improvement
Ownership: Take technical leadership of significant platform initiatives
Stability: Well-funded with strong product-market fit and growing customer base
Ownership over tickets
Practical over perfect
Context over process
Customer empathy
Build for scale
Competitive salary + equity
Health, dental, vision insurance
Flexible PTO
Remote-first culture
Modern development tools and AI assistants
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