Staff Backend Engineer: Scale Microservices & AI Tools

SNAP, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 229,000 - 343,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid parental leave

Comprehensive medical coverage

Mental health support

Job summary

Snap Inc. is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to design and operate scalable backend services, including user identity, friend graph, and core persistence layers. You will collaborate across teams, test rigorously, and apply best practices for availability and security while leveraging AI tools to ship high-quality services.

The role emphasizes ownership of medium-sized features, incident response, and cross-functional collaboration, with a strong focus on privacy and production readiness.

Qualifications

• Requires BS or higher in CS or related field.
• 9+ years post-Bachelor software development experience; or Masters/PhD variants with required years.
• Experience leading or acting as a domain expert within a tech org.
• Experience with distributed systems and large-scale services.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and operate scalable backend services.
• Collaborate across teams to translate product requirements into robust solutions.
• Test, debug, and improve code quality and performance.
• Advocate for availability, resilience, and cost efficiency.
• Leverage AI tools while ensuring architectural integrity and security.

Skills

Distributed systems

System availability

Feature ownership

Incident response

Collaboration

Cloud services

Security awareness

AI tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in CS/related field

9+ years post-Bachelor software development (or 8+ with Master, 5+ with PhD)

Technical leadership experience

Tools

Java

C++

Python

NoSQL (Redis/Memcached)

Kubernetes

GCP/AWS

Job description

Snap Inc. is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to design and operate scalable backend services, including user identity, friend graph, and core persistence layers. You will collaborate across teams, test rigorously, and apply best practices for availability and security while leveraging AI tools to ship high-quality services.

The role emphasizes ownership of medium-sized features, incident response, and cross-functional collaboration, with a strong focus on privacy and production readiness.