Staff Backend Engineer, Product

Optimism; New York (NY); Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in the social network space is seeking a staff back-end engineer to join their core product engineering team. This role will involve impactful work, shipping protocols, APIs, and applications that reach millions of users. Ideal candidates will have substantial experience leading projects and a strong technical background, particularly in API development.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Flexible time-off policy

New Macbook Pro for full-time employees

Equity for employees

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience, ideally 2+ as a tech lead.
• Strong background in building APIs at scale.
• Exceptional communication and prioritization skills.

Responsibilities

• Drive engineering excellence in maintainability and performance.
• Lead larger-scale projects for new features.
• Build and maintain APIs used by products.

Skills

API building

Technical leadership

Communication

Cross-functional collaboration

System design

Tools

Python

GraphQL

MongoDB

TypeScript

React

Next.js

Solidity

Job description

About Us

Zora is a new kind of on-chain social network where you can express yourself freely, connect with others, and discover the value of your imagination. We believe that by using crypto, we can enable a more equitable system for creators, fundamentally rediscovering the power of the internet.

We’re working tirelessly to make Zora available to as many people as possible with a simple, fun, and rewarding consumer app. Our mission is to make creating on the internet free and valuable.

About the Role

We’re looking for a staff back-end engineer to join one of our core product engineering teams, responsible for shipping our protocol, API, and web and mobile apps. Your work will directly impact millions of users interacting with our products.

Responsibilities

• Drive engineering excellence in maintainability, performance, and attention to detail, balancing pragmatism and polish
• Lead larger-scale projects to build out major new features in the product
• Build and maintain an API used by the product as well as external partners
• Act as a standard-bearer across the team through technical leadership: writing well-reasoned technical RFCs, contributing to RFC and code reviews, pair programming, mentoring other engineers, sharing knowledge through talks and demos
• Coordinate incident response for critical services, ensuring rapid recovery and systematic fixes to address root causes

What Makes You a Fit

• 8+ years of experience as an engineer, ideally 2+ as a tech lead
• Strong technical background building APIs at scale (and ideally applications as well)
• Proven track record of working effectively with cross-functional partners like product, design, and marketing
• Exceptional communication and prioritization skills
• Experience setting the hiring bar and shaping interview processes for engineering teams
• Ability to design and implement performant, durable systems that make smart tradeoffs between product needs and technical constraints
• Demonstrated success in delivering products consistently to external users
• EU or U.S. (ET) time zone

Strong Candidates May Have

• Prior experience building on top of blockchains
• Deep technical expertise in Python, GraphQL, and MongoDB
• Comfort moving across the stack when needed (TypeScript/React/Next and Solidity)
• Experience operating within high-ambiguity startup environments
• Strong product intuition and a keen eye for design

Benefits

ZORA provides top quality medical, dental, and vision insurance, with a flexible time-off policy and a new Macbook Pro for full-time employees. Employees also receive equity.

Location

ZORA is international. Our headquarters are the internet and we have employees all over the world. We’re currently in Atlanta, Berlin, Lisbon, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Sydney, and Vancouver.