Staff Backend Software Engineer

Who you are

• You bring significant experience in backend engineering, with a strong track record building and scaling distributed systems
• You write clean, maintainable, and secure code in at least one modern backend language such as Ruby (preferred), Scala, Go, or Python
• You have a keen eye for reliability and observability, and care about defining SLOs, implementing metrics and alerts, and debugging distributed systems
• You have a proven track record of technical leadership: setting architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and driving large-scale migrations or modernization efforts
• You thrive in cross-functional collaboration, holding your own with senior PM, design, and ML partners, and caring more about the system landing well than about being right
• You enjoy mentoring, knowledge-sharing, and contributing to cross-team initiatives, including architecture review groups and design discussions that shape Scribd's engineering culture
• You care deeply about the users; understanding what makes Everand impactful in their daily lives and translating that empathy into the systems you build
• Strong coding ability in Ruby
• Experience improving reliability, latency, or throughput in large-scale distributed systems
• Experience working alongside ML teams on recommendation or feed systems
• Familiarity with experimentation or feature-flagging platforms

What the job involves

• As a Staff Software Engineer on the Everand Core team, you’ll help shape the future of how people discover, organize, and enjoy books
• Everand is growing, and we’re evolving our reading and listening experiences to make stories more accessible, personal, and engaging for our readers
• You'll play a vital role in connecting readers with the stories they love by owning the backend platform that powers Everand's web and mobile experiences
• This includes everything from rapid experimentation to the services driving discoverability, personalization, and our core consumption journeys
• You'll work closely with engineers across search, recommendations, web, and mobile, as well as design and product partners, to align technical decisions with user needs and platform capabilities
• Along the way, you'll build systems that drive performance, personalization, and reliability, and help shape the technical direction of our backend team
• We value quality over speed, thoughtful planning over short-term hacks, and continuous improvement over “just good enough.”
• We’re looking for engineers who share these values and who are energized by writing clean, scalable code, trying new technologies, and collaborating with diverse teams
• We believe the best experiences come from teams who care deeply about the people they build for, and each other
• Your main focus will be to set technical direction for the Everand backend: writing and socializing design documents, driving architecture reviews, and turning ambiguous product intent into concrete backend design
• Own backend reliability and platform health, including staging, CI/CD, databases, queues, cost, and observability
• Raise the ceiling for the team through PR review, mentorship, pairing, and by setting a high bar on design, testing, and ops
• Be the Everand backend voice in cross-team planning, and the glue in cross-functional execution
• Foster a culture of technical excellence while driving scalable, resilient, and observable systems that let teams move fast, simplify complexity, and deliver with confidence
• Modernize legacy systems and eliminate technical debt to improve velocity and scalability
• Partner with Product, Design, Analytics, and Web, Mobile, and ML Engineers to deliver backend systems that support experimentation and a single source of truth across platforms, using data, metrics, and telemetry to uncover trends, resolve anomalies, and guide the team with clarity and foresight
• Champion a user-first mindset, grounding technical decisions in how they enhance the reading and listening experience

Benefits

• Healthcare Insurance Coverage (Medical/Dental/Vision): 100% paid for employees
• 12 weeks paid parental leave
• Short-term/long-term disability plans
• 401k/RSP matching
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Learning & Development programs
• Quarterly stipend for Wellness, Connectivity & Comfort
• Mental Health support & resources
• Free subscription to Scribd + gift memberships for friends & family
• Referral Bonuses
• Book Benefit
• Sabbaticals
• Company wide events
• Team engagement budgets
• Vacation & Personal Days
• Paid Holidays (+ winter break)
• Flexible Sick Time
• Volunteer Day
• Company-wide Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion programs