Staff Backend Architect — Storage & Caching Platform

Socket.dev; Bellevue (CA); On-site; USD 229,000 - 343,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid parental leave

Comprehensive medical coverage

Emotional and mental health support

Long-term equity participation

Job summary

Snap Inc. is seeking a Staff Technical Lead to define strategy for Storage, Caching, and Identity infrastructure. You will lead multi‑quarter initiatives, design large distributed systems across AWS/GCP, and improve reliability, performance, and developer experience at scale.

You will mentor engineers, shape architectural direction, and partner with Infrastructure and Product Engineering to deliver durable platforms for an AI‑first world.

Qualifications

• Deep experience designing, building, and operating backend services or distributed systems at significant scale.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives over multiple quarters while balancing quality, reliability, and delivery velocity.
• Strong system design fundamentals across APIs, compute, storage, observability, and orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction for Snap’s Service Infrastructure platform across multi‑year roadmaps.
• Design, build, and operate foundational backend infrastructure for reliability and performance.
• Act as a hands‑on Staff‑level tech lead driving initiatives from concept to rollout.
• Partner with engineers and leaders to align on direction, priorities, and platform investments.
• Improve developer experience by creating durable systems and abstractions.
• Drive best practices in reliability, observability, incident response, and cost efficiency.
• Mentor and uplift engineers and resolve complex technical conflicts.
• Identify opportunities where AI can improve platform quality and productivity.

Skills

Backend systems

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

System design

Reliability & operations

AI-enabled infrastructure

Mentoring engineers

Ambiguity management

Go/Java/Python/C++

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering or equivalent

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP)

Service mesh

Job description

Snap Inc. is seeking a Staff Technical Lead to define strategy for Storage, Caching, and Identity infrastructure. You will lead multi‑quarter initiatives, design large distributed systems across AWS/GCP, and improve reliability, performance, and developer experience at scale.

You will mentor engineers, shape architectural direction, and partner with Infrastructure and Product Engineering to deliver durable platforms for an AI‑first world.