Staff Backend Engineer: Scale, Reliability, Flexible Work

Scribd, Inc.; Phoenix (AZ); Hybrid; USD 141,000 - 254,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Scribd Flex

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Mental health support

Paid time off

Parental leave

Retirement matching

Learning and development

Wellness stipend

Scribd suite access

AI tools access

Job summary

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer on the Everand Core team to own the backend platform powering Everand's discovery, personalization, and consumption journeys.

You will collaborate with search, recommendations, web, mobile, design, and product partners to shape technical direction and drive fast experimentation. You’ll build reliable, scalable backends, set SLOs, mentor engineers, and help modernize legacy systems while delivering observable systems that improve user experience

Qualifications

• Extensive backend engineering experience and scaling distributed systems.
• Ability to write clean, secure code in Ruby, Scala, Go, or Python.
• Focus on reliability, observability, and defining SLOs with metrics.
• Proven leadership: mentoring engineers and driving large migrations.
• Able to collaborate with PM, design, ML teams for cross-functional initiatives.
• Committed to user-centric backend design for Everand experiences.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the Everand backend and translate product intent into design.
• Own backend reliability, CI/CD, databases, queues, and observability.
• Mentor engineers and raise the team's technical bar.
• Act as backend voice in cross-team planning and execution.
• Modernize legacy systems to improve velocity and scalability.
• Partner with product, design, analytics, and ML engineers to support experimentation.
• Champion a user-first mindset in system design.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Mentoring

Architectural direction

Cross-functional collaboration

Observability

Tools

Ruby

Scala

Go

Python

Job description

Scribd, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer on the Everand Core team to own the backend platform powering Everand's discovery, personalization, and consumption journeys.

You will collaborate with search, recommendations, web, mobile, design, and product partners to shape technical direction and drive fast experimentation. You’ll build reliable, scalable backends, set SLOs, mentor engineers, and help modernize legacy systems while delivering observable systems that improve user experience