Senior Staff Software Engineer - Monetization

Nextdoor; United States; Hybrid; USD 281,000 - 374,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grant

Health plans (multi-plan)

OneMedical membership

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Nextdoor is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to shape technical strategy and build scalable systems across Nextdoor’s monetization platform and subscription products. You will lead complex initiatives and work with cross-functional teams to drive measurable business impact.

You will partner with Product, ML, Data Science, and Engineering to align stakeholders, raise engineering standards, and deliver value for neighbors and businesses in a hybrid work environment across multiple offices.

Qualifications

• Exceptional system design skills and a proven record of building scalable distributed systems.
• Experience building advertising platforms and native ad-serving systems.
• Proficiency in Java, Kotlin, or Python.
• Experience with real-time data pipelines using Kafka, Flink, or Kafka Streams.

Responsibilities

• Define technical strategy for monetization platform and lead initiatives end-to-end.
• Build scalable, reliable, privacy-preserving systems for ads and SMB subscriptions.
• Partner with Product, ML, Data Science, and Engineering to shape roadmaps.
• Raise engineering standards across quality, reliability, observability, and delivery.
• Remain hands-on in architecture, reviews, debugging, and production operations.
• Collaborate across offices and participate in team events.

Skills

System design

Distributed systems

Mentoring engineers

AI-assisted workflows

In-person collaboration

Tools

Apache Kafka

Apache Flink

Kafka Streams

Job description

#TeamNextdoor

Nextdoor is the essential neighborhood network. Neighbors, public agencies, and businesses use Nextdoor to connect around local information that matters in more than 350,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. Download the app and join the neighborhood at nextdoor.com.

Meet Your Future Neighbors

Nextdoor generates revenue through advertising products that connect businesses with local customers, as well as subscription offerings such as Opportunity Alerts. Monetization Engineering builds the platforms and experiences that power, scale, and grow these revenue streams.

We are seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer, reporting to the Head of Engineering, Monetization, to shape technical strategy and build scalable, reliable systems across Nextdoor’s native advertising platform and subscription products.

This hands-on technical leader will partner with Product, Machine Learning, Data Science, and Engineering to align senior stakeholders and deliver complex initiatives with measurable business impact.

At Nextdoor, we operate in an AI-first environment and expect every team member to actively use AI tools as part of their workflow. We aren’t looking for prompt engineers; we’re looking for people who use tools like Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Glean to challenge their own thinking and take full ownership of AI-assisted outputs.

We also offer a warm and inclusive work environment that embraces a hybrid employment model, blending an in office presence and work from home experience for our valued employees. The hiring team will go over these expectations with you if you are being considered for a role near one of our offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London.

The Impact You’ll Make

• Define the technical strategy and architecture for Nextdoor’s monetization platform, leading complex initiatives from concept through measurable outcomes
• Build scalable, reliable, secure, and privacy-preserving systems that support advertising and SMB subscription products
• Partner with Product, ML, Data Science, and Engineering to shape roadmaps, navigate tradeoffs, and deliver value for neighbors and businesses
• Raise engineering standards and address systemic gaps in quality, reliability, observability, release safety, and developer productivity
• Remain hands-on across architecture, critical implementation, design reviews, debugging, launches, and production operations
• Participate in in-person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off-sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
• Build in-person relationships with team members and contribute to Nextdoor’s company culture

What You’ll Bring To The Team

• Exceptional system design skills and a proven record of building scalable, reliable, high-performance distributed systems
• Deep experience building advertising platforms, including a strong understanding of large-scale native ad-serving systems
• Expert-level proficiency in at least one of the languages: Java, Kotlin, or Python
• Extensive experience building large-scale, real-time data pipelines using Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, or Kafka Streams
• A strong record of mentoring senior engineers, developing technical leaders, and raising the engineering bar across teams
• Experience using AI-powered development workflows to improve engineering productivity, quality, and delivery speed

Preferred skills

• Experience developing or productionizing machine-learning models in partnership with ML engineers and data scientists
• Strong understanding of advertising optimization engines, including pacing, bidding, ranking, and budget allocation

Rewards

Compensation, benefits, perks, and recognition programs at Nextdoor come together to create our total rewards package. Compensation will vary depending on your relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.

The starting salary for this role is expected to range from $281,000 to $374,000 on an annualized basis, or potentially greater in the event that your 'level' of proficiency exceeds the level expected for the role. The salary range will be determined by the candidate’s geographic location.

We expect to award a meaningful equity grant for this role. With quarterly vesting, your first vest date will take place within 3 months of your start date.

When it comes to benefits, we have you covered! Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of health plans, including a 100% covered employee only plan option, and we also provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

At Nextdoor, we empower our employees to build stronger local communities. To create a platform where all feel welcome, we want our workforce to reflect the diversity of the neighbors we serve. We encourage everyone interested in our mission to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we always consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

For information about our collection and use of applicants’ personal information, please see Nextdoor's Personnel Privacy Notice, found here.