Staff Product Engineer (Ruby on Rails) - SearchApi

Staff Product Engineer (Ruby on Rails)

We are looking for a senior Ruby on Rails engineer to become the technical backbone of our product. You'll own the hardest PRs, raise the bar for the entire codebase, and eventually take technical load off the CEO. This is not a management role. It's a hands-on, high-trust position for someone who can ship production code across every part of the product.

About SearchApi

SearchApi is a real-time SERP API delivering structured data from 100+ search engines and sources, including Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Jobs, Bing, Baidu, YouTube, Amazon, and many more. We power production workloads for Fortune 500 companies and fast-moving startups who need reliable search data at scale.

We're a lean, profitable, bootstrapped team. No VC pressure, no bloat. Just engineers shipping real products to real customers.

🎯 Why Join Us?

• Own the product. You'll work across the entire codebase. Billing, API, dashboard, enterprise features, internal tools. Everything.
• High trust, high impact. The CEO/CTO currently reviews the hardest PRs. You'll take that over.
• Shape the technical direction. Introduce better patterns, raise code quality, build compounding systems.
• Work directly with the CEO/CTO. No layers. Direct collaboration on product and technical decisions.
• Bootstrapped and Profitable. We answer to customers, not investors.

🛡️ SearchApi Values

• We do everything the Rails Way. If you don't like DHH's style, this may not be the place for you.
• We embrace the one person framework.
• We hire Managers of One. We trust you to figure it out.
• Remote-only. Async-first. Results-driven.
• Transparency. No politics.

💻 Tech Stack

• Ruby on Rails 8.1
• Ruby 3.4
• Hotwire (Stimulus.JS + Turbo)
• TailwindCSS (TailwindUI components)
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Sidekiq
• Stripe
• Terraform + AWS

💪 What You'll Do

• Own the hardest PRs. Complex features, tricky refactors, performance-critical code. The stuff that requires senior judgment.
• Review other engineers' PRs. Raise the bar. Catch issues before they ship. Mentor through code review.
• Build enterprise features. SAML, SCIM, audit logs, permissions.
• Work on billing and payments. Stripe integrations, subscription logic, usage-based billing.
• Create and iterate on product features. API playground, dashboard improvements, developer experience.
• Develop in-house algorithms. Design and implement custom solutions.
• Debug and optimize performance. Memory profiling, CPU profiling, query optimization.
• Work with native gems and low-level bindings. Different architectures, compilation issues, C extensions.
• Ship frontend with good design sense. Build clean, functional UI using TailwindUI.
• Maintain security standards. Understand common vulnerabilities and review code with security in mind.

✨ About You

• Many years of Ruby on Rails experience in production apps.
• Proven track record of systems built, problems solved, and code shipped.
• Stripe billing, subscriptions, and webhooks experience required.
• Strong product thinker focused on customer needs.
• Good design sense with TailwindCSS.
• Security-minded with understanding of authentication and vulnerabilities.
• Comfortable with performance debugging and optimization.
• Great written communication skills for PRs, docs, and code comments.
• Self-directed and fluent in English (written and spoken).
• BSc or higher in CS or equivalent technical field.