Job description
About Us:
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 exceptional, tailored products. We’ve been recognized by top publications like Forbes, Fortune and are backed by top institutional investors who share our vision of building the world’s next great consumer brand.
At Short Story, we celebrate petiteness, boldness, and modern womanhood. Our culture combines an insatiable hunger for data, an unwavering commitment to creating superior products, and a hustle startup mentality. We have a strong sense of urgency. Since 2019, we’ve cultivated a team of dedicated problem solvers and fashion enthusiasts. We’re excited for you to join us on this exhilarating journey.
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 stacks 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:
AAs one of the first 5 engineers, this is a high-impact opportunity to shape the backbone of Short Story’s tech ecosystem. Reporting to the Head of Engineering, you’ll work across internal and customer-facing platforms—powering everything from order processing to warehouse ops and customer personalization.
You’ll be part of a lean but mighty engineering team, collaborating closely with product managers, operators, and front-end engineers. You’ll also set foundational backend patterns, influence architectural decisions, and help us scale with speed and intention.
Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services in Python (Flask, Falcon, or FastAPI)
Write clean, well-documented, and well-tested code using Pytest and modern API patterns
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement robust order and customer handling systems
Own core infrastructure components across AWS, Postgres, and Kubernetes
Deploy and monitor services using CI/CD best practices and observability tools
Contribute to system architecture and play a key role in tech design decisions
Ensure reliability and performance across systems that handle logistics, personalization, and customer interactions
Help establish engineering guidelines and backend best practices
(Bonus points if you love games like Factorio—our ops team is basically a logistics simulator IRL)
Must Haves:
You have back-end development experience and have built and scaled complex systems end-to-end
You’re fluent in Python and have shipped production systems using frameworks like Flask, Falcon, and/or FastAPI
You’ve worked with containerized services in Kubernetes and are confident deploying to cloud platforms like AWS
You have strong experience with relational databases like Postgres and know how to write efficient, scalable SQL
You’ve led backend architecture decisions and can identify when to optimize, refactor, or replatform
You’re experienced with CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability tools to keep systems healthy
You’ve built and maintained robust test suites using Pytest (or similar frameworks) and care about reliability
You’ve designed APIs that are clean, consistent, and built to last
You know your way around queue-based or event-driven architectures and can design systems for scale
You’re thoughtful about documentation, communication, and mentoring others
You thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and enjoy owning complex problems from idea to execution
You’re excited by ambiguity and love solving complex problems from end to end
Nice to Haves:
5+ years of experience in professional back-end development
Experience working in a fast-moving startup environment
Experience integrating/building component systems and libraries for large codebases
Have worked on sprint-based teams
Have experience working remotely with timezone differences
Have led or built a back-end engineering team before
Have contributed to open-source or have a strong portfolio of personal project
Benefits and Compensation:
4 weeks vacation (20 days)
Medical & dental benefits
Fully remote work with optional office access in San Francisco and Toronto
Ownership and autonomy in a fast-growing, mission-driven company
Short Story is committed to providing equal employment opportunity and a work environment free of discrimination and harassment for all employees and applicants. We work diligently to ensure equal opportunity for all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics.
