Senior Software Engineer

ChicagoFull-timesenior

Software EngineerSoftware Engineering

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Overview

We’re Tovala, a food-tech company reinventing home cooking to save consumers time. Through an innovative combination of hardware, software, and fresh food delivery,

Technical Tools

Software EngineerSoftware Engineering

We’re Tovala, a food-tech company reinventing home cooking to save consumers time. Through an innovative combination of hardware, software, and fresh food delivery, we make it incredibly simple for anyone to prepare and enjoy delicious, home-cooked meals without sacrificing time to do whatever matters to them. Through our superior technology, product experience and food quality, we have separated Tovala from the busy pack of other meal delivery businesses. In the process, we’ve amassed a loyal, rapidly growing following and our retention, product engagement and customer NPS are all best-in-class. We’ve raised over $100mm from great investors like Left Lane Capital, Origin Ventures, Y Combinator and Comcast Ventures and have invested strongly in building a unique culture that fosters growth, personal development and camaraderie.

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our engineering team and help us build the systems that power Tovala’s digital experience and internal applications. This isn’t a role defined by a single language or framework. We care far more about your ability to architect strong backend systems, solve real problems, and ship products that matter to customers, both internal and external, than whether your background is in Go, Python, TypeScript, or something else entirely.

The way software gets built is changing fast. AI tools are already reshaping how our team works, and we want engineers who are not just comfortable with that shift but are actively leading it. You should have strong opinions on how to use AI-assisted development workflows to move faster without sacrificing quality. You’ll be expected to work across our stack, including backend services, infrastructure, and frontend when the problem calls for it, and to collaborate closely with product, design, and other engineering teams to deliver outcomes, not just code.

Design, build, and maintain backend systems and services that support Tovala’s software products across web and mobile. Our current backend stack is Go and AWS, but we value your ability to learn and adapt over specific language experience.

Own problems end-to-end. You’ll scope work, make technical decisions, implement solutions, and see them through to production. You won’t wait to be handed a spec.

Use AI-assisted development tools and workflows as a core part of how you work. We expect you to have real experience here, whether that’s with tools like Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, or similar, and to help shape how the broader team adopts these practices.

Work across the stack when the situation calls for it. While your depth is in backend engineering, you’re comfortable contributing to frontend work and aren’t boxed in by a single domain.

Collaborate directly with stakeholders and other engineers to understand customer problems, define solutions, and make smart trade-offs between speed and quality.

Contribute to architectural decisions and help evolve our technical approach as the team and product grow.

Review code thoughtfully, both human-written and AI-generated, with an eye toward system-level coherence, maintainability, and performance.

Mentor and support other engineers. Share what you know, raise the bar on engineering practices, and help create an environment where people do their best work.

Required

5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with meaningful depth in backend development (APIs, data pipelines, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure).

Strong fundamentals in systems design and architecture. You can make sound decisions about how services communicate, how data flows, and where complexity should live.

Demonstrated experience with AI-assisted software development. You’ve integrated AI tools into your daily workflow and can speak concretely about how they’ve changed the way you build software.

Ability to work across the stack. You have backend depth but can pick up frontend work (React, TypeScript, or equivalent) and contribute meaningfully when needed.

Excellent communication skills. You can explain technical decisions clearly to both engineers and non-technical partners, write well, and navigate cross-functional collaboration with ease.

Strong problem-solving instincts. You’re the kind of engineer who digs into the root cause, thinks about second-order effects, and finds pragmatic solutions.

A track record of owning and shipping projects with meaningful business impact, ideally in a fast-paced environment where priorities shift.

Nice to Have

~2 min read

Experience with Go and/or AWS (our current primary backend stack).

Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation) and CI/CD pipelines.

Experience helping define or evolve AI development practices for a team or organization.

Experience building or integrating AI/ML features into production products (RAG systems, LLM integrations, chatbots).

Background working in a consumer product or food-tech company.

Solution-Minded: You focus on outcomes, not output. You want to understand the customer problem before you start writing code, and you’re not precious about your approach if a better one emerges.

AI-Forward: You see AI tools as a fundamental shift in how software gets built, not a novelty. You’re already using them daily and have thoughts on how teams should work with them effectively.

Cross-Functional Collaborator: You thrive working alongside product, design, and other teams. You communicate clearly, give and receive feedback well, and care about the end-to-end experience, not just the technical layer.

Startup Mindset: You’re comfortable in an environment where priorities evolve, where you’ll wear multiple hats, and where your work has direct, visible impact on the business.

Curious and Adaptive: You stay current. Whether it’s a new framework, a new AI capability, or a new way of structuring a team, you’re interested in what works and why.