Senior Software Engineer Startup Jobs in Illinois

ABOUT US

HirexHire (pronounced hire by hire) is a Chicago-based recruiting and talent consultancy that integrates with companies short-term to provide long-term talent solutions. We take a seat in our client’s everyday operations to understand their people's goals, gaps, and challenges. We then develop and implement the processes and technologies to execute a sustainable and scalable talent plan.

We partner with companies expecting or experiencing high growth who need to hire at scale or fill a critical role rapidly. Our clients are not looking for quick-fix placements but are thoughtfully building a hiring strategy to scale their businesses.

OUR CLIENT

Location: Chicago, IL 

Industry: Sports / Software

Company Size: >50 

What They Do: Our client is a sports media and technology platform focused on helping digital content creators build and engage subscription-based communities. Their platform streamlines communication, payments, and content distribution to create a more reliable and seamless user experience.

Contact HirexHire for more client information

THE ROLE

Our client is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join their growing engineering team in Chicago. This role is focused on building and scaling high-quality mobile and web applications, with a strong emphasis on React Native development and user-facing product experiences. The ideal candidate is a product-minded engineer who enjoys owning projects end-to-end, collaborating cross-functionally, and shipping impactful features in fast-paced startup environments. This individual will work closely with leadership, product, and go-to-market teams to rapidly develop scalable, intuitive solutions that drive user engagement and platform growth.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of mobile-first product features across iOS, Android, and web platforms.

• Build and maintain high-quality React Native applications with a focus on performance, usability, and scalability.

• Develop full-stack applications and APIs that support seamless user experiences across mobile and web environments.

• Collaborate closely with product, design, and go-to-market stakeholders to identify opportunities and deliver impactful solutions.

• Own projects throughout the full software development lifecycle, from technical planning and architecture through production deployment.

• Balance speed and execution with long-term maintainability and scalability considerations.

• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and architectural guidance to engineers across the team.

• Contribute to engineering best practices, development workflows, CI/CD processes, and platform reliability initiatives.

• Partner with cross-functional teams to continuously improve user engagement, retention, and overall platform experience.

• Leverage AI-assisted development tools and modern engineering workflows to improve productivity and accelerate feature delivery.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

• 3-6 years of professional software engineering experience, ideally within startup or high-growth technology environments.

• Strong experience building mobile applications using React Native.

• Experience developing modern frontend applications using TypeScript and JavaScript frameworks.

• Full-stack development experience with backend technologies such as Python, Django, Go, or similar frameworks.

• Experience building and consuming RESTful APIs and working with relational databases such as PostgreSQL.

• Proven track record of shipping customer-facing features and products in fast-paced environments.

• Strong understanding of mobile application architecture, performance optimization, and responsive UI/UX principles.

• Experience working with cloud infrastructure, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and modern development workflows preferred.

• Strong technical judgment with the ability to prioritize effectively and make thoughtful tradeoff decisions.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work cross-functionally across technical and non-technical teams.

• Passion for building intuitive consumer-facing products and delivering exceptional user experiences.

• Experience within creator economy, marketplace, fintech, sports media, or consumer technology platforms preferred.

LOCATION & COMPENSATION

• This is a Hybrid role based in Chicago, IL (Loop) with an expectation of 2-3 days onsite per week.

• Compensation includes a competitive base salary as well as commission/OTE, equity, and a benefits package.