Staff Backend Engineer, OpenAPI Platform

Etsy, Inc.; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 159,000 - 215,000; Full time

Job summary

Etsy, Inc. is seeking a Staff Engineer to join the OpenAPI team in Brooklyn, focusing on backend development and platform stability. You will collaborate with product managers and engineering managers to shape direction, mentor peers, and deliver scalable API tooling for sellers and developers.

The role emphasizes ownership of platform quality, breaking changes management, and guiding teams across Etsy to adopt OpenAPI features with minimal disruption.

Qualifications

• Experience with object-oriented software languages; majority work in PHP.
• Experience building and maintaining REST APIs and managing breaking changes.
• Experience using observability tools to monitor API usage and metrics.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain PHP software for OpenAPI platform.
• Evolve the OpenAPI platform by reducing friction and improving DX.
• Partner with product teams to roll out new features.
• Debug complex issues spanning multiple systems and determine root cause.
• Mentor teammates through PR reviews and pairing.
• Steer technical direction and project selection for the team.

Skills

PHP

REST APIs

Object-oriented

Ownership

Communication

Mentoring

Autonomous learning

AI Agents

Tools

Grafana

Honeycomb

Google Cloud Logging

MCP servers

Job description

Etsy, Inc. is seeking a Staff Engineer to join the OpenAPI team in Brooklyn, focusing on backend development and platform stability. You will collaborate with product managers and engineering managers to shape direction, mentor peers, and deliver scalable API tooling for sellers and developers.

The role emphasizes ownership of platform quality, breaking changes management, and guiding teams across Etsy to adopt OpenAPI features with minimal disruption.