Staff Software Engineer, Core Infrastructure

Deep experience designing, building, and operating backend services or distributed systems at significant scale.

Strong technical leadership skills, with the ability to set vision, ideate high-impact projects, and translate strategy into executable roadmaps.

Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives over multiple quarters while balancing architectural quality, reliability, and delivery velocity.

Strong foundation in system design, including APIs, service architecture, compute platforms, storage concepts, observability, and workflow orchestration.

Proven track record of owning highly available, mission-critical systems, including operational readiness, incident response, and systemic improvements.

Strong judgment in making technical trade-offs and prioritizing the right long-term platform investments for a large engineering organization.

Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence engineers and leaders across Senior Manager- or Director-level organizations.

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.

Familiarity with responsible use of emerging AI technologies to improve engineering quality, alignment, and innovation at scale.

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

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.

a technical lead, domain expert, or owner of complex technical initiatives.

building and operating backend systems or distributed systems in production environments.

leading architecture or platform direction beyond an individual team, with demonstrated influence across stakeholders and partner teams.

Experience with service infrastructure domains such as service mesh, compute platforms, observability, or related backend platform systems.

with large-scale microservices, cloud infrastructure, storage systems, or platform architecture.

with Go, Java, Python, C++, or similar backend languages.

with Kubernetes, containerized systems, developer platforms, or internal infrastructure tooling.

driving long-term technical strategy for a platform or infrastructure area.

Track record of delivering large-scale, high-impact technical work across team boundaries.

applying AI to infrastructure, developer tooling, platform quality, or engineering productivity is a plus.

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To reflect this, we practice a “default together” approach and expect our team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.

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We do our best to make sure you and your loved ones have everything you need to be happy and healthy, on your own terms.

Our benefits are built around your needs and include paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success!

In the United States, work locations are assigned a pay zone which determines the salary range for the position.

The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions.

The starting pay may be negotiable within the salary range for the position.

These pay zones may be modified in the future.