Staff Software Engineer (Core Infrastructure)

Join Snap Inc. as a Staff Software Engineer (Core Infrastructure) and lead the technical direction for Snap's Service Infrastructure platform. You will design, build, and operate foundational backend infrastructure that powers critical services across Snap, with a focus on reliability, scalability, performance, and operational excellence. This is an exciting opportunity to shape the architecture and technical direction of one of Snap's most critical platforms in an AI-first world.

• Lead the technical direction for Snap’s Service Infrastructure platform, defining multi-quarter and multi-year roadmaps across areas such as service mesh, compute, observability, and adjacent platform capabilities.
• Design, build, and operate foundational backend infrastructure that powers critical services across Snap with a focus on reliability, scalability, performance, and operational excellence.
• Act as a hands-on Staff-level tech lead, driving ambiguous and high-impact technical initiatives from concept through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration.
• Ability to mentor, unblock, and elevate other engineers while creating structures and mechanisms that make teams more effective over time
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence engineers and leaders across Senior Manager- or Director-level organizations
• Strong technical leadership skills, with the ability to set vision, ideate high-impact projects, and translate strategy into executable roadmaps
• Strong foundation in system design, including APIs, service architecture, compute platforms, storage concepts, observability, and workflow orchestration
• Deep experience designing, building, and operating backend services or distributed systems at significant scale
• 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
• Familiarity with responsible use of emerging AI technologies to improve engineering quality, alignment, and innovation at scale
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and driving clarity in technically complex problem spaces
• Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives over multiple quarters while balancing architectural quality, reliability, and delivery velocity
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience leading architecture or platform direction beyond an individual team, with demonstrated influence across stakeholders and partner teams
• Experience a technical lead, domain expert, or owner of complex technical initiatives
• Experience building and operating backend systems or distributed systems in production environments
• 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
• Experience with service infrastructure domains such as service mesh, compute platforms, observability, or related backend platform systems
• Experience with large-scale microservices, cloud infrastructure, storage systems, or platform architecture
• Experience with Go, Java, Python, C++, or similar backend languages
• Experience with Kubernetes, containerized systems, developer platforms, or internal infrastructure tooling
• Track record of delivering large-scale, high-impact technical work across team boundaries
• Experience driving long-term technical strategy for a platform or infrastructure area
• Experience applying AI to infrastructure, developer tooling, platform quality, or engineering productivity is a plus