Software Engineer - Developer Experience
About the role
Figma is growing our team of passionate creatives and builders on a mission to make design accessible to all. The Build Systems team within Figma’s Developer Experience organization owns Figma’s build and CI infrastructure, enabling engineers to ship changes to production quickly and safely. We build and operate core platforms across our polyglot monorepo, including build systems, artifact repositories, merge queues, test frameworks, and CI pipelines. We’re looking for an experienced technical leader to help shape these platforms, uplevel the team, and deliver high-impact platforms that accelerate engineering velocity. This is a full-time role that can be held from one of our US hubs or remotely in the United States.
Responsibilities
- Drive technical roadmap and strategy for the Build Systems team
- Partner with cross-functional teams and leadership to identify developer pain points and design elegant, scalable solutions
- Lead complex, multi-quarter initiatives reducing build/test times and improving CI reliability, all while balancing technical excellence with pragmatic delivery
- Design, build, and maintain modern developer tools including scalable build systems, distributed CI platforms, and test frameworks that serve thousands of engineers
- Architect and implement large-scale infrastructure on AWS that powers our entire build pipeline to ensure reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency
- Mentor and uplevel the team through technical guidance, code reviews, and architectural leadership, leading by example and actively investing in your teammates’ growth
- Collaborate with product engineers (your customers), infrastructure teams, and executive stakeholders, and communicate technical decisions clearly to audiences ranging from individual contributors to senior leadership
- Keep up to date with industry trends and best practices in build systems, CI, and developer tooling, and incorporate applicable technologies into our roadmap
Requirements
- 5+ years of engineering experience, including 4+ years on Infrastructure, Platform, or Developer Experience teams
- Deep expertise in build systems (e.g., Bazel, Buck, Pants, Gradle) and operating large-scale monorepos
- Experience optimizing CI/CD, building developer tooling at scale, and designing reliable, high-performance distributed systems
- Hands-on experience with AWS, CI platforms (e.g., Buildkite), Infrastructure as Code, and strong coding skills in languages such as Go, TypeScript, Python, or Ruby
- Proven technical leadership, with a track record of setting technical direction, driving cross-team initiatives, and communicating effectively across a wide range of stakeholders
Nice to have
- Experience migrating large codebases to modern build systems (especially Bazel)
- Experience building test frameworks and improving test infrastructure
- Excellent problem-solving skills, using a systematic and thorough approach grounded in first principles, with a bias for action and a strong focus on impact
- Willingness to work on grungy problems when they have a high impact on the business or the health of our platform
- Deep care for the quality of the software and systems you build, with an artisan mentality and a constant drive to improve your craft, while striking the right balance between idealism and pragmatism
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision coverage
- Retirement benefits with company contributions
- Parental leave and reproductive or family planning support
- Mental health and wellness benefits
- Paid time off, including sick leave, holidays, and flexible PTO (subject to manager approval)
- Company recharge days
- Cell phone and home internet reimbursements
- Lifestyle spending accounts
- Sales incentive compensation for most sales roles and an annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles
- Equity to employees
Pay
Annual Base Salary Range: $185,000—$376,000 USD. Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including individual qualifications, market demands, and specific work location.