Staff Backend Engineer, Picnic - New York City

About Us

At Picnic, we’re reinventing the way employees experience lunch at work. By partnering with top local restaurants and batching hundreds of orders, we make it easy for companies to offer high-quality, individually packed meals, without fees or tips. Our mission is to create a seamless, affordable, and joyful lunch experience that benefits both employees and employers.

Our engineering effort spans infrastructure, platforms, and product development, driving innovation and excellence. Whether optimizing systems, building tools for developers, or creating user-facing features, your work will have a direct impact on real-world problems.

We are seeking Backend Engineers who are excited to contribute at all levels - whether you specialize in infrastructure, platform, or product-focused development.

Check our tech blog to find out more about what we’re building.

What You’ll Do

As a Staff Backend Engineer, you’ll design, implement, and optimize systems that power mission-critical applications. Your role will adapt to your strengths and interests, with opportunities to focus on:

• Infrastructure : Build and maintain scalable, secure, and high-performance systems to ensure operational reliability.


• Platform : Develop robust APIs and developer tools to improve team efficiency and scalability.


• Product : Engineer backend services that support customer-facing applications and deliver seamless user experiences.

Core Responsibilities :

• Architect and implement scalable backend systems and APIs.


• Ensure high system performance, reliability, and security.


• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers to deliver end-to-end solutions.


• Participate in code reviews, testing, and documentation to maintain high-quality standards.


• Mentor junior engineers or take on leadership roles, depending on your seniority.

What We’re Looking For

We value diversity of experience and are looking for individuals passionate about solving complex problems.

Basic Qualifications :

• Proficiency in backend programming languages like Java , Go.


• Familiarity with relational and/or NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL , MongoDB , Redis ).


• Experience with cloud platforms like AWS , Google Cloud , or Azure .


• Understanding of RESTful APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.


• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications (for Senior Levels) :

• Experience with containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes .


• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.


• Exposure to large-scale data processing or event-driven architectures.


• Leadership experience in team projects or mentoring roles.

Why Join Us?

• Growing market : You’ll be focused on an $80 billion market that’s projected to reach at least $500 billion by 2030 in the US alone.


• Changing the restaurant industry : You’ll be part of a team that helps restaurants succeed in online food delivery.


• Collaborative environment : You will work with a talented and diverse team that values innovation and learning. You will receive support and guidance from experienced colleagues and managers, helping you to learn, grow and achieve your goals, and you’ll work closely with other teams to ensure our customer’s success.


• Career Growth : Opportunities for advancement across engineering tracks, from individual contributors to leadership roles.


• Exciting Projects : Contribute to products and systems used by millions worldwide.

What else you need to know :

We believe that people do their best work when they are together. As a company, we’re in the marketplace of ideas and innovation. When you’re constantly innovating, changing how an industry works, inventing new products and processes - and we are doing all these things - we believe we’re better as a team in-person. That’s why all of our teams (except for our field-based roles) are now working from one of our office locations 5 days a week.

Looking forward to sharing more about a Career of Substance.