Staff Backend Engineer, Core

Cantos Ventures; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 235,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive healthcare benefits

Flexible PTO

401k

Equity options

Commuter Benefits

Job summary

Cantos Ventures in San Francisco is looking for an experienced backend engineer to join as a Staff Engineer. This role involves leading the development of features in their Django monolith and optimizing critical user workflows. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in Python and a passion for solving user problems, alongside capabilities in mentoring and upholding engineering excellence.

The position offers competitive salaries, comprehensive healthcare benefits, and flexible PTO.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building backend applications at high scale and availability.
• Extensive experience with Python and optimizing database queries.
• Strong advocate for automated testing and engineering best practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of new features in the Django monolith.
• Optimize database queries and caching layers for performance.
• Collaborate with product and design on user experience.

Skills

Backend Development

Python

Database Optimization

Automated Testing

Tools

Django

PostgreSQL

Redis

Terraform

Job description

About us

Scribe is where exceptional people come to do the best work of their careers. More than 94% of the Fortune 500 use Scribe to ensure work gets done right, and see how to do it even better. Our Workflow AI platform automatically captures and optimizes workflows so teams work smarter, faster, and more consistently.

We’re growing fast — since our founding in 2019, we’ve grown to over 5 million users across 600,000 businesses. Based in San Francisco, we've been named a LinkedIn Top Startup, are valued at over $1 billion, and are backed by leading investors. Join us in our mission to uplevel how people do work.

How we work

We are builders aspiring to master our crafts. We care deeply about our teammates and want to win, together. We embrace the following values:

• Accelerate impact
• Raise the bar
• Make our users heroes
• Clear is kind
• Rapid learning machine
• One team one dream

About this role

We’re looking for an experienced backend engineer to join our growing team as a Staff Engineer on our Core Engineering team. This team owns the most essential user experiences in Scribe — including viewing and editing Scribes, managing Pages, Embeds, Exports, and supporting key Integrations. Your work will directly impact how users create, share, and consume documentation, helping them be more effective in their work.

You should be passionate about solving real user problems and approaching challenges with both pragmatism and elegance. This is an opportunity to collaborate closely with designers, user advocates, and engineers across the stack to shape the future of the Scribe product. As a Staff Engineer, you’ll contribute to the design of our systems, help define and elevate our engineering culture, and mentor other engineers on the team.

You can expect to

• Lead development of new features in our Django monolith, focusing on the core experience of viewing and editing Scribes — including pages, embeds, exports, and related integrations
• Optimize database queries, endpoints, and caching layers to improve performance and scalability across critical user workflows
• Collaborate with product and design to deliver intuitive, reliable editing and rendering experiences at scale
• Make architectural decisions about when to extend the monolith and when to invest in service extraction for high‑scale systems
• Set a high bar for engineering excellence through code reviews, mentorship, and best practices in testing, observability, and performance

You could be a great fit if

• You have 8+ years of experience building backend applications at high scale and availability
• You have extensive experience with Python
• You know how to optimize endpoint performance and database queries
• You’re a strong advocate for automated testing
• You’ve seen and can implement engineering best practices
• You’re user‑centric, empathetic, and passionate about your work

Bonus

• Experience with Django (not required, but a big plus)
• Startup experience (not required, but we build and move fast!)

Our backend tech stack

• Python + Django
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Celery + AmazonMQ
• Infrastructure in Terraform (AWS)

Full‑Time US Employee Benefits Include

• Some of the nicest and smartest teammates you’ll ever work with
• Competitive salaries
• Comprehensive healthcare benefits
• Exciting and motivating equity
• Flexible PTO
• 401k
• Parental Leave
• Commuter Benefits (SF office employees)
• WFH Stipend

Compensation

We benchmark compensation using trusted market data and apply a tiered geographic framework to ensure competitive pay across locations. The ranges below represent the base salary band for this role by tier. Final offers are determined by experience, scope, internal parity, and location.

$235-$280k base + equity

We consider several factors when determining compensation, including location, experience, and other job‑related factors.

At Scribe, we celebrate our differences and are committed to creating a workplace where all employees feel supported and empowered to do their best work. We believe this benefits not only our employees but our product, customers, and community as well. Scribe is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Extremely Important Note

Do not click apply to submit your application. Instead, send a POST request to https://apply.scribe.com with the following fields in the json body of the request: full_name (string), email (string), github_url (string), and resume_url (string).