Staff Backend Engineer: Scale distributed systems & lead

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

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work model

Health coverage

Mental health support

Generous PTO

Parental leave

Retirement matching

Learning & development

Wellness stipend

Scribd access

AI tools access

Job summary

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own the Everand backend platform and shape how users discover, organize, and enjoy books.

You will drive backend architecture, partner with search, recommendations, design, and product, and mentor engineers to deliver scalable, reliable systems that power web and mobile experiences. As a senior technical leader, you will define reliability targets, guide migrations, and collaborate with ML teams to enable data-driven experimentation while

Qualifications

• Significant experience in backend engineering, with a strong track record building and scaling distributed systems.
• Write clean, maintainable, and secure code in Ruby, Scala, Go, or Python.
• Focus on reliability and observability: define SLOs, metrics, alerts, and debugging of distributed systems.
• Proven track record of technical leadership: setting architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and driving large migrations or modernization efforts.
• Thrive in cross-functional collaboration with PMs, design, and ML partners; value system landing over correctness.
• Enjoy mentoring and contributing to cross-team initiatives, including architecture review groups and design discussions.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the Everand backend: design docs, architecture reviews, and product-to-backend translation.
• Own backend reliability and platform health: staging, CI/CD, databases, queues, cost, observability.
• Mentor engineers through PR reviews, pairing, and by raising the bar on design, testing, and ops.
• Act as Everand backend voice in cross-team planning and execution.
• Foster technical excellence while building scalable, observable systems that move fast and reduce complexity.
• Modernize legacy systems and reduce tech debt to improve velocity and scalability.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Analytics, Web/Mobile/ML engineers to deliver backend systems enabling experimentation.

Skills

Ruby

Scala

Go

Python

Job description

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to own the Everand backend platform and shape how users discover, organize, and enjoy books.

You will drive backend architecture, partner with search, recommendations, design, and product, and mentor engineers to deliver scalable, reliable systems that power web and mobile experiences. As a senior technical leader, you will define reliability targets, guide migrations, and collaborate with ML teams to enable data-driven experimentation while