Staff Software Engineer

- We are looking for an L6 Staff Technical Lead to define the strategy and technical direction for Snap’s Storage, Caching, and Identity infrastructure
- In this hands-on leadership role, you will drive high-impact, multi-quarter initiatives; design and operate highly available distributed systems across AWS and GCP; and improve reliability, performance, cost efficiency, and developer experience at scale. You will influence architecture across critical Storage, Caching, User, Friends, and Relationship services, partner broadly across Infrastructure and Product Engineering, mentor engineers, and turn ambiguous technical challenges into durable platforms and executable roadmaps
- This is an exciting opportunity to shape how Snap’s Storage & Caching Infrastructure evolves to meet the demands of an AI-first world. If you are passionate about building large-scale distributed systems and foundational infrastructure, we would love to hear from you
- Lead the technical direction for Snap’s Service Infrastructure platform, defining multi-quarter and multi-year roadmaps across areas such as service mesh, compute, observability, and adjacent platform capabilities
- Design, build, and operate foundational backend infrastructure that powers critical services across Snap with a focus on reliability, scalability, performance, and operational excellence
- Act as a hands-on Staff-level tech lead, driving ambiguous and high-impact technical initiatives from concept through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration
- Partner closely with engineers and leaders across infrastructure and product teams to align on technical direction, priorities, trade-offs, and long-term platform investments
- Improve the developer and operator experience for teams building on Snap’s backend platform by creating durable systems, abstractions, and mechanisms that raise engineering velocity and quality at scale
- Drive best practices in service reliability, observability, incident response, system performance, and cost efficiency across mission-critical infrastructure
- Mentor and uplevel other engineers, provide technical leadership across team boundaries, and help resolve complex technical conflicts to move the organization forward
- Help shape how Snap’s infrastructure evolves for an AI-first future, including identifying opportunities where AI can improve platform quality, developer productivity, or operational workflows in a responsible and scalable way ### Benefits
- Up to 28 weeks of parental leave and return-to-work program
- Adoption, surrogacy, infertility, and fertility preservation benefits
- Backup child care coverage, center-based care support, & caregiver assistance
- Dependent Daycare Flexible Spending Account
- For Snap, employees taking care of loved ones with complex, chronic, or ongoing care needs (i.e. parent with Dementia, spouse with Cancer, child with Autism), your family can save time, money, & stress with Wellthy
- Short-term disability, long-term disability, basic life insurance, and AD&D insurance
- Lactation rooms (based on office location) and breastmilk shipping coverage
- Services to support your path to parenthood & beyond
- fertility support & family planning via Carrot, SNOO, Hinge Health
- Comprehensive medical coverage, including PPO, HDHP with HSA, and HMO options
- Dental coverage, including orthodontia benefits
- Vision coverage, including frame and contact allowance and LASIK benefits
- Free membership to One Medical for primary and urgent healthcare services
- Business Travel Insurance
- Gym perks and discounts
- Team fitness classes and races
- Sports leagues
- Cooking and nutritional workshops
- Well-being reimbursement
- Unlimited access to virtual physical therapy with Anthem
- 15 sessions per year of mental health for you + dependents through Lyra
- Generous time off and leave programs. In the US, this includes the following:
- Up to 3 weeks (120 hours) of vacation time and 1 floating holiday for non-exempt team members
- 15 sick and safe days per year
- 12 paid holidays per year
- Speaker series, classes, and subscriptions to educational programs
- Social gatherings, team outings, and volunteering programs
- Meditation and yoga classes
- Snap Inc. provides a 401(k) plan that allows you to save on a pre-tax, Roth, and after-tax basis for your retirement (yes, we even have the Mega backdoor option) Snap will also match 100% up to 3% of your contribution and then 50% on your 4th and 5th%
- Flexible Spending Accounts for healthcare, daycare and commuter
- Health Savings Account with employer contributions
- Rocket Lawyer memberships
- Financial education programs
- Snap exclusive discounts and perks
- Compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success
- Strong judgment in making technical trade-offs and prioritizing the right long-term platform investments for a large engineering organization
- Strong technical leadership skills, with the ability to set vision, ideate high-impact projects, and translate strategy into executable roadmaps
- Strong foundation in system design, including APIs, service architecture, compute platforms, storage concepts, observability, and workflow orchestration
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence engineers and leaders across Senior Manager
- or Director-level organizations
- Familiarity with responsible use of emerging AI technologies to improve engineering quality, alignment, and innovation at scale
- Proven track record of owning highly available, mission-critical systems, including operational readiness, incident response, and systemic improvements
- Deep experience designing, building, and operating backend services or distributed systems at significant scale
- Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives over multiple quarters while balancing architectural quality, reliability, and delivery velocity
- Ability to mentor, unblock, and elevate other engineers while creating structures and mechanisms that make teams more effective over time
- Comfort operating in ambiguity and driving clarity in technically complex problem spaces
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- Experience leading architecture or platform direction beyond an individual team, with demonstrated influence across stakeholders and partner teams
- Experience a technical lead, domain expert, or owner of complex technical initiatives
- Experience building and operating backend systems or distributed systems in production environments
- 9+ years of software development experience; or a Master’s degree in a technical field and 8+ years of software development experience; or a PhD in a related technical field and 5+ years of software development experience
- Experience with service infrastructure domains such as service mesh, compute platforms, observability, or related backend platform systems
- Experience with Go, Java, Python, C++, or similar backend languages
- Experience with large-scale microservices, cloud infrastructure, storage systems, or platform architecture
- Experience with Kubernetes, containerized systems, developer platforms, or internal infrastructure tooling
- Experience driving long-term technical strategy for a platform or infrastructure area
- Track record of delivering large-scale, high-impact technical work across team boundaries
- Experience applying AI to infrastructure, developer tooling, platform quality, or engineering productivity is a plus