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At Rec (rec.us), we're reimagining how the world plays, trains, competes, explores, and gets outside. Our mission is to empower the entire recreation community to thrive, and our vision is bold: power recreation worldwide.
Booking a tennis court? Signing your kid up for swim lessons? Trying to find an open rec league? It shouldn't feel like filing your taxes. We're partnering with parks and rec departments, golf courses, campgrounds, gyms, and more to transform a $105B industry stuck in the Stone Age.
We're redesigning recreation from the ground up for the mobile-first, AI-powered world we live in.
Who We AreWe're a small team with outsized ambition. We've built products and led teams at places like Google, Amazon, Uber Eats, MasterClass, The Athletic, Nextdoor, and more.
Our Values:
Be Relentless. Move fast. Own it. Ship real value early and often.
Win Together. Speak up and go beyond the boundaries of your role.
Take Pride. Treat this like it's yours, because it is.
This is not a seat-filling role. We're a Series A company in scaling mode, adding new partners and users every day, and the foundation under all of it needs someone who owns it.
That's this role. You'll take the lead on the infrastructure work that's currently spread across too few people: database upgrades and optimization, performance profiling, compliance, launch readiness, and the scaling decisions that determine whether we can support 10x and 100x the traffic we have today. You'll evaluate and integrate vendors where it makes sense (Temporal, Epsio, and others), and you'll make sure the platform keeps up as we add partners and users every day.
You'll still ship product code when the work crosses into your domain, but the primary job is owning the foundation. We need someone who treats reliability and performance as first-class product features, because for our partners, they are.
What You'll DoOwn the core infrastructure: AWS, PostgreSQL, Temporal, and the systems that keep Rec running reliably as we scale.
Lead database performance and optimization work, including upgrades, query profiling, indexing strategy, and capacity planning.
Drive performance and reliability improvements across the stack. Identify bottlenecks before they hit production, and resolve them when they do.
Own launch readiness for major product releases and partner onboardings. Load test, capacity plan, and make sure we don't fold under pressure.
Evaluate and integrate infrastructure vendors (Temporal, Epsio, observability tools, etc.). Build when it's the right call, buy when it isn't.
Partner with Engineering, Product, and Partner Success to scope the infrastructure work behind new product areas.
Help us stay compliant as we grow (SOC 2, PCI, and whatever else the business requires).
Contribute to product code when the work touches your domain, but treat the foundation as your main job.
Use AI tools fluently across your workflow, from writing migrations and runbooks to debugging production issues and analyzing metrics.
5+ years of experience building and operating infrastructure for production systems at scale.
You're fired up by the mission.
AI fluency is non-negotiable.
Deep experience with PostgreSQL in production. Schema design, query optimization, replication, upgrades, capacity planning. You've been on the other end of a database emergency and you know how to prevent the next one.
Strong AWS chops. You know the services we rely on, the ones we should avoid, and how to keep the bill from getting out of hand.
You think in orders of magnitude. You can look at a system handling 10K transactions a day and reason about what breaks at 100K, 1M, and 10M.
You ship with quality. Reliability is the baseline.
You have good vendor instincts. You know when to build versus buy, you can evaluate a new tool quickly and honestly.
You thrive in ambiguity.
You communicate clearly, candidly, and constructively.
Frontend: Next.js (hosted on Vercel), React, TypeScript
Backend: Node.js, Koa, Objection.js, PostgreSQL
Infra & Ops: AWS, Temporal, Twilio
Where you'll spend most of your time: AWS (primary), PostgreSQL, Temporal, observability and performance tooling (Datadog), and whatever vendors we bring in as we scale.
AI & Tooling: Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent — mandatory.
Compensation: $140,000–$200,000 base + meaningful equity
Benefits: Flexible PTO, top-tier health/dental/vision, 401(k).
Work location: San Francisco — in-office most days at our downtown SF office.
Ready to build something real? Something fun? Something big? We're ready for you.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of experience building and operating infrastructure for production systems at scale
- Deep experience with PostgreSQL in production
- Strong AWS experience
- AI fluency
What We Do
Rec is building the operating system for the activity economy. Every day, millions of people look for ways to play, learn, move, compete, and connect in their communities. Yet the technology powering recreation has been largely ignored for decades. modernizing the $105B activity industry – parks & recreation departments, golf courses, campgrounds, gyms, and play agencies. Our platform powers registrations, facility reservations, instructor marketplaces, payments, permits, and operations for cities and recreation organizations across the country. While much of the tech industry is focused on capturing attention, we're focused on creating more opportunities for people to spend time away from screens via more youth sports, more recreation classes, more community events, and more ways to stay active and connected.
Why Work With Us
We're applying Silicon Valley talent and AI innovation to one of the largest, least-modernized industries in the world to create more play, movement and connection in the real world. If you get fired up by making tech that actually matters to families, coaches, and kids all over the country, come join us.
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