Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Communications Platform)

In this role, you’ll serve as the senior technical voice for the team — driving architecture, shaping roadmap execution, and elevating the engineering quality of a small but high-impact team. This is a hands-on role with real technical depth, paired with broad cross-functional influence.

This is a hybrid role based in our NYC office (3 days per week), reporting to the Engineering Manager of Communications Platform.

You’ll Get To…

Define and own the technical strategy for platform modernization, reliability hardening, and engineering standards across backend services.

Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to a team of backend and frontend engineers, helping them grow in system design, decision-making, and ownership.

Write high-quality Java code and stay close to execution — leading design reviews, code reviews, and architectural decisions that raise the bar across the codebase.

Proactively identify and address systemic risks in performance, reliability, security, and operability before they become incidents.

Serve as a key technical partner on cross-team and company-wide architecture initiatives.

Balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health, communicating tradeoffs clearly to stakeholders and leadership.

Who We’re Looking For

10+ years of backend engineering experience, with significant time building and operating large-scale, customer-facing systems.

Deep expertise in Java and backend service development, including APIs, async processing, messaging systems (ex: Kafka), and data stores (ex: MongoDB, CockroachDB).

Strong experience with distributed systems in production — including reliability, scaling, failure modes, and observability.

A proven track record of technical leadership at the Staff or Senior-plus level, influencing architecture across multiple teams or services.

Experience evolving existing systems — modernizing legacy platforms, simplifying complexity, and strengthening reliability without unnecessary rewrites.

Experience operating within platform engineering contexts, where your customers are internal or external product teams and the quality of your APIs and abstractions directly shapes their velocity.

The ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical partners.

A mindset oriented toward mentorship, collaboration, and inclusive technical leadership.

Technologies You'll Work With

Java, Spring, Kafka, MongoDB, CockroachDB, Kubernetes, GCP.

The team actively uses Claude Code, Cursor and GitHub Copilot to accelerate development and code review.

Benefits & Perks

A choice between medical plans with an option for 100% covered premiums

Fertility and adoption benefits

Access to supplemental insurance plans for additional coverage

Headspace mindfulness app subscription

Global Employee Assistance Program

Retirement benefits with employer match

Flexible paid time off

12 weeks paid parental leave and family care leave

Pretax commuter benefit

Education reimbursement

Employee donation match to community organizations

7 Global Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

Dog-friendly workplace

Free lunch and snacks

Private rooftop

Hack week twice per year

Cash Compensation Range: $185,500 - $299,000 USD

The base salary for this position will vary based on job-related criteria including relevant skills, experience, and location, among other factors.

In addition to the cash compensation above (which includes base salary and, where applicable for eligible roles, may include overtime pay), Squarespace employees are eligible to be granted an option to purchase our common stock. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive structure in addition to base salary.

About Squarespace

Squarespace is a design-driven platform helping entrepreneurs build brands and businesses online. We empower millions of customers in more than 200 countries and territories with all the tools they need to create an online presence, build an audience, monetize, and scale their business. Our suite of products range from websites, domains, ecommerce, and marketing tools, as well as tools for scheduling with Acuity and creating and managing social media presence with Bio Sites and Unfold. Our team of more than 1,700 is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Dublin, Ireland, and Aveiro, Portugal. For more information about our company, visit https://www.squarespace.com/about/careers.

Our Commitment

#LI-Hybrid

Thank you in advance for providing the following details about your work history from your resume! This helps us ensure that your candidate information is accurate and consistent during the hiring process.

Squarespace will never solicit your personal banking information or ask you to transfer money in connection with a job offer or interview. We also will not reach out to you via phone or SMS without your permission or knowledge.

If you plan to use AI in any capacity during your candidate journey, please review our Candidate AI Policy.