Staff Engineer

Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams. Our vision is to unlock global opportunity for every person, team, and business. Built for the way the world works today, Deel combines HRIS, payroll, compliance, benefits, performance, and equipment management into one seamless platform. With AI-powered tools and a fully owned payroll infrastructure, Deel supports every worker type in 150+ countries—helping businesses scale smarter, faster, and more compliantly.

As the fastest-growing Software as a Service (SaaS) company in history, Deel is transforming how global talent connects with world-class companies – breaking down borders that have traditionally limited both hiring and career opportunities. We're not just building software; we're creating the infrastructure for the future of work, enabling a more diverse and inclusive global economy.

Your experience at Deel will be a career accelerator. At the forefront of the global work revolution, you'll tackle complex challenges that impact millions of people's working lives. With our momentum—backed by a $17.3 billion valuation and $1 B in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in just over five years—you'll drive meaningful impact while building expertise that makes you a sought-after leader in the transformation of global work.

This Staff level engineer, for the US Payroll team, is expected to step into a pivotal role as a main technical advisor, guiding the exciting strategic evolution of one of our most essential engines. It provides technical leadership across the engineering organization, partnering closely with the Director of Engineering to shape architecture, technical decisions and engineering excellence. Your mission is to architect and scale this platform to support giant enterprise clients and our entire EOR and PEO community.

Building the Future: Architectural Leadership

• You'll be the driving force behind the essential re-architectures and migrations that make this growth possible.
• We're looking for someone who loves hunting down bottlenecks and turning inefficiencies into smooth, elegant solutions.
• Designing the robust frameworks that will unlock global, enterprise-level scale.
• Setting the high technical standards that keep our systems manageable and healthy as we grow.

Empowering the Team: Mentorship & Excellence

• Your impact goes far beyond the code. You'll be a champion for our engineering culture, helping our teams reach new heights.
• Simplifying the complex and clearing the path so our engineers can do their best work without friction.
• Boosting our collective velocity and quality through smart, systematic improvements.
• Investing in our people: mentoring senior engineers and fellow tech leads to raise the bar for everyone.
• Acting as a collaborative partner, bridging the gap between engineering and the wider leadership team.

Who You Are

You bring a holistic perspective: you know how to keep today's systems rock-solid while building the ambitious infrastructure of tomorrow. If you're a leader who thrives on high-impact challenges and has a heart for transforming complex environments, we can't wait to meet you!

Primary Responsibilities

• Serve as a principal technical advisor to the Director of Engineering, leading technical design and architecture for critical initiatives that align with business objectives.
• Drive the technical decision-making process and architecture reviews, identifying and resolving technical risks while balancing short-term delivery with long-term health.
• Represent engineering leadership in planning sessions, building strong partnerships with product and design to drive alignment across product lines.
• Implement engineering best practices and design processes that increase team effectiveness, velocity, and technical quality across the organization.
• Establish metrics and KPIs to measure effectiveness, leading post-mortems and driving systematic improvements to reduce organizational friction.
• Mentor senior engineers and tech leads, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and helping establish career development frameworks and hiring standards.

What this role is not:

• Not a traditional Tech lead role: Not primarily focused on owning the technical execution of a single engineering team or day to day delivery.
• Not limited to one product or team: This role will operate across multiple teams and product areas identifying opportunities to improve.
• Not just an architectural role: Success requires more than designing systems. This person will influence technical strategy.
• Not a purely advisory position: While this role operates at a strategic level, the expectation is to remain technically credible and close enough to the work to guide complex decisions.

What You Bring

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, ideally within fast-growing organizations and across multiple technical domains.
• A track record of technical leadership in organizations of 30+ engineers, with a history of driving initiatives across multiple teams.
• Strong system design and architecture skills, with the ability to implement engineering processes at scale.
• Excellence in technical communication and documentation, with a dedicated history of mentoring senior engineers and contributing to technical communities.

Our workforce deserves fair and competitive pay that meets them where they are. With scalable benefits, rewards, and perks, our total rewards programs reflect our commitment to inclusivity and access for all.

At Deel, we're an equal-opportunity employer that values diversity and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of race, religion, sex, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, pregnancy or maternity or other applicable legally protected characteristics.