Staff Backend Engineer, Fable Platform

Scribd, Inc.; Miami (FL); Hybrid; USD 141,000 - 254,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Scribd Flex

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Mental health support

Generous PTO

Parental leave

Retirement matching and equity

Learning & development programs

Wellness & home office stipends

Product suite access

Equity ownership

Job summary

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Fable Core backend. You’ll set technical direction, own reliability, and mentor a high-impact team building scalable services for millions of users.

Ideal candidates have 10+ years in backend with Python/Django, cloud infrastructure experience (GCP/AWS), and a track record of incident ownership and design leadership. This role offers a hybrid work model with substantial ownership and growth opportunities.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of backend experience in Python/Django and at least one other stack.
• Experience operating production systems on a major cloud – OLTP databases at scale, container orchestration, queueing, and CI/CD.
• Own incidents end-to-end with follow-through.
• Ability to write a Technical Design Document (TDD) that a staff peer trusts and a product lead can understand.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with PM, design, and ML partners.
• A pragmatic default paired with a strong systems instinct – root causes over symptoms.
• Hands-on experience with agentic engineering tools and workflows in a real production setting.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the Fable backend and socialize technical design documents.
• Own backend reliability and platform health, including staging, CI/CD, databases, queues, cost, and observability.
• Lead incident response and drive durable post-mortems – write the doc, run the meeting, and ensure action items ship.
• Be the Fable backend voice in cross-team planning and the glue in cross-functional execution.
• Raise the ceiling for the team through PR review, mentorship, pairing, and by setting a high bar on design, testing, and ops.
• Build and evolve the Fable backend platform so the team can ship faster and more safely.
• Bring agentic engineering practices into the team’s day‑to‑day work and help the team adopt them effectively.

Skills

Backend architecture

Python/Django

Cloud platforms (GCP/AWS)

Incident ownership

Technical Design Document

Cross-functional collaboration

Agentic engineering

Tools

Kubernetes

Datadog

GCP

AWS

PostgreSQL

CI/CD

Job description

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Fable Core backend. You’ll set technical direction, own reliability, and mentor a high-impact team building scalable services for millions of users.

Ideal candidates have 10+ years in backend with Python/Django, cloud infrastructure experience (GCP/AWS), and a track record of incident ownership and design leadership. This role offers a hybrid work model with substantial ownership and growth opportunities.