Staff Software Engineer - Collaborative Web Platform

About the role

Pantheon brings together exceptional builders who take ownership, drive meaningful impact, and shape what's next for the web. We power more than 300,000 websites globally for organizations including Google, Princeton, Salesloft, Clorox, and the United Nations. Every day, thousands of developers and marketers use our WebOps platform to build, iterate, and scale WordPress, Drupal, and Next.js sites that reach billions of people worldwide.

Opportunity

This is a rare chance to be at the ground floor of something genuinely new. Pantheon is building the next generation of web content infrastructure: a real-time, collaborative platform that redefines how teams create, publish, and manage content on the modern web. This is a zero-to-one role.

Role

• Platform Architecture & Technical Leadership
  • Design and own the architecture of a real-time content platform — including data models, sync protocols, API surface, and client-side state management.
  • Drive technical decisions that balance developer ergonomics, operational simplicity, and long-term scalability across a cloud-native, multi-tenant environment.
  • Define engineering standards for the team: API design conventions, testing strategy, performance budgets, and observability practices.
  • Evaluate and select third-party services, libraries, and infrastructure components — with a clear framework for build vs. buy tradeoffs.
• Full-Stack Product Development
  • Build backend services that power collaborative editing, conflict resolution, and content delivery — operating reliably at scale across a distributed cloud infrastructure.
  • Build frontend systems that enable visual, real-time editing experiences — including page builders and publishing workflows.
  • Own the integration layer between the editing experience and the underlying platform: APIs, webhooks, and the developer-facing extension model.
  • Contribute meaningfully to UX architecture — not just implementation — by collaborating with design on interaction models for novel, stateful editing flows.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Mentorship
  • Serve as a technical partner to product and design — translating ambiguous problem spaces into concrete technical strategies and phased delivery plans.
  • Mentor and elevate engineers on the team through code review, pairing, architecture feedback, and clear documentation of technical decisions.
  • Engage with customers and partners to pressure-test architectural assumptions and ensure the platform addresses real-world integration patterns.

Requirements

• Experience & Technical Depth
  • 10+ years of overall software engineering experience, with a strong track record of ownership across the full product lifecycle.
  • Genuine full-stack capability — you have shipped production systems on both the backend (APIs, data services, cloud infrastructure) and frontend (interactive UIs, component systems, browser performance).
  • Experience with real-time or collaborative systems — whether content editing, multiplayer applications, event-driven architectures, or live data synchronization.
  • Cloud-native fluency: you are comfortable designing and operating services in GCP, AWS, Cloudflare, or Azure, with experience in containerization and modern deployment pipelines.
  • API design expertise: you have strong opinions about REST, GraphQL, and event-driven interfaces — and know when to apply each.
  • Familiarity with CMS architectures — headless, hybrid, or traditional — and their tradeoffs in real-world deployments.
  • Frontend architecture chops: you understand component modeling, state management, rendering performance, and the browser platform at a level that goes well beyond framework familiarity.
• Soft Skills & Values
  • Owners mindset: you are energized by ambiguity, take initiative without being asked, and feel personal ownership over outcomes — not just outputs.
  • Clear communicator: you can translate complex technical tradeoffs for product partners, write crisp design docs, and give feedback that makes engineers better.
  • Systems thinker: you see how architectural decisions today create optionality or debt tomorrow, and you make those tradeoffs consciously.
  • Builder's patience: zero-to-one work is non-linear. You understand that the path to a great product involves iteration, dead ends, and genuine collaboration — and you thrive in that environment.

Bonus Skills

• Experience with visual or low-code editing interfaces (page builders, WYSIWYG editors, drag-and-drop component systems).
• Experience building developer-facing platforms or extension systems (SDKs, plugin APIs, CLI tooling).
• Contributions to open-source projects in the web platform or developer tooling ecosystem.

What You Bring to the Table

Experience & Technical Depth

• 10+ years of overall software engineering experience, with a strong track record of ownership across the full product lifecycle.
• Genuine full-stack capability — you have shipped production systems on both the backend (APIs, data services, cloud infrastructure) and frontend (interactive UIs, component systems, browser performance).
• Experience with real-time or collaborative systems — whether content editing, multiplayer applications, event-driven architectures, or live data synchronization.
• Cloud-native fluency: you are comfortable designing and operating services in GCP, AWS, Cloudflare, or Azure, with experience in containerization and modern deployment pipelines.
• API design expertise: you have strong opinions about REST, GraphQL, and event-driven interfaces — and know when to apply each.
• Familiarity with CMS architectures — headless, hybrid, or traditional — and their tradeoffs in real-world deployments.
• Frontend architecture chops: you understand component modeling, state management, rendering performance, and the browser platform at a level that goes well beyond framework familiarity.

What We Offer

• Industry competitive compensation and equity plan
• Flexible time off, sick days, and 13 paid holidays
• Comprehensive medical insurance including Health, Dental and Vision
• Paid parental leave (plus fertility, adoption and other family planning benefits)
• In-office workspace (San Francisco & Chicago)
• Monthly allowance for wellness, reading and access to LinkedIn Learning for continued development
• Events and activities both team-based and company wide that inspire, educate and cultivate

Equal Opportunity Employer

Pantheon is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applications from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or any other classification protected by law.

Visa Sponsorship

Visa sponsorship is not available at this time.