Staff Backend Engineer, Core

About the role

We are looking for an experienced backend engineer to join our growing team as a Staff Engineer on our Core Engineering team. This role focuses on the core experience of viewing and editing Scribes, including pages, embeds, exports, and related integrations.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of new features in our Django monolith, focusing on the core experience of viewing and editing Scribes — including pages, embeds, exports, and related integrations
• Optimize database queries, endpoints, and caching layers to improve performance and scalability across critical user workflows
• Collaborate with product and design to deliver intuitive, reliable editing and rendering experiences at scale
• Make architectural decisions about when to extend the monolith and when to invest in service extraction for high-scale systems
• Set a high bar for engineering excellence through code reviews, mentorship, and best practices in testing, observability, and performance

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building backend applications at high scale and availability
• Extensive experience with Python
• Knowledge of optimizing endpoint performance and database queries
• A strong advocate for automated testing
• Experience with Django (not required, but a big plus)
• Startup experience (not required, but we build and move fast!)

Qualifications

• Bonus experience with Django
• Startup experience

Skills

• Python
• Django
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Celery
• AmazonMQ
• Terraform (AWS)

Benefits

• Full-time US Employee Benefits
• Competitive salaries
• Comprehensive healthcare benefits
• Exciting and motivating equity
• Flexible PTO
• 401k
• Parental Leave
• Commuter Benefits (SF office employees)
• WFH Stipend

Pay

$250K - $280K base + equity

Schedule

Full-time