Senior Backend Engineer

About Us

Scotch is building the next-generation operating system for beverage alcohol retailers — combining POS, payments, back office, and e-commerce into a platform purpose-built for liquor stores.

We’re modernizing one of the oldest industries in the world: the $1.6T beverage alcohol market. Our platform helps retailers run more efficiently through streamlined payments, inventory management, reporting, and day-to-day operations.

Our founders came from Skupos (acquired 2023) and Drizly (acquired by Uber). We've raised $28M from VMG Partners, First Round, Lerer Hippeau, Watchfire, and Toba Capital, with angels including the founder of Drizly and early Toast executives, and in 2026, closed a $20M Series A. Forbes has recognized Scotch as a leader in liquor retail tech.

Position Overview

Scotch is hiring an experienced backend-leaning full stack engineer to own features end-to-end across our Rails + Hotwire application — from concept through deployment. This role carries significant technical ownership: data modeling, database performance, and background job architecture on top of standard feature delivery. It's a senior individual contributor role, not a management position, but one with real influence over engineering standards and process.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and ship robust full stack features in Rails and Hotwire
• Ownership of the full development lifecycle — concept, design, testing, and deployment
• Own data modeling, database design, and query performance (PostgreSQL)
• Build and maintain background job processing and asynchronous workflows
• Optimize application performance, scalability, and resource utilization
• Partner with cross-functional teams to turn requirements into technical solutions
• Conduct code reviews and uphold coding standards and best practices
• Drive continuous improvement of development processes and workflows

Qualifications & Skills

• 4+ years of professional backend web development experience
• Strong proficiency in Ruby or similar language
• Solid understanding of Rails application architecture and server-side patterns
• Experience designing and building RESTful APIs, and working with JSON and other data-exchange formats
• Strong database skills — schema design, query optimization, and migrations (e.g., PostgreSQL)
• Experience with version control (e.g., Git)
• Understanding of secure coding practices and application security
• Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills, with strong communication and collaboration
• Understanding of AI tools and proficiency in applying them (but not during the interview process unless expressly stated)

Nice to Haves

• Experience with POS/commerce systems, payment workflows, payment processing, and gateway integration
• Experience and comfort with the speed and demands of early-stage startups
• Familiarity with background job frameworks and best practices (e.g., GoodJob, Sidekiq)
• Experience with caching, message queues, and third-party API integrations
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and best practices for managing production releases
• Familiarity with Infrastructure (AWS, Heroku)
• Experience with observability and monitoring (logging, metrics, tracing)

Compensation & Benefits

• Compensation: The anticipated base salary range for this position is $160,000–$180,000. Individual offers are based on a variety of factors, including experience, skills, qualifications, and internal equity.
• Competitive equity package
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Unlimited flexible PTO

Why Scotch?

• Interesting work, solving real challenges. POS terminal engineering means hardware integration, offline resilience, and payment security. Real constraints make more exciting problems to solve.
• Full ownership. You'll touch architecture decisions, set coding standards, and see your work in production at stores across the country.
• The domain is growing. Scotch just closed a $20M Series A off 500%+ YoY growth. The liquor retail POS market is fragmented and underserved, and our engineering team is building something with real staying power.
• Software people depend on. Every shift, store managers and associates are using what you build. The feedback loop is short and the stakes are real, which makes the craft matter even more.
• AI is built into how the company works. The product is AI-native, and the engineering culture reflects that. This is a place where using AI tools to move faster is expected and encouraged.

Scotch is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.