Staff Software Engineer (Backend) – Everand Core

Join Scribd, Inc. as a Staff Software Engineer (Backend) leading the Everand Core platform in a fully remote position based in San Francisco. You'll architect the backend systems that empower millions to discover, organize, and enjoy stories while shaping the technical direction of a fast-growing engineering team.

Position Summary

The Everand platform connects readers with the books and audiobooks they love. As a Staff-level backend engineer, you'll own the technical strategy that powers Everand's web and mobile experiences—from rapid experimentation to the core services driving discovery, personalization, and consumption. You'll work alongside engineers in search, recommendations, web, and mobile, collaborating with product, design, and analytics teams to translate user needs into scalable system design. Your focus will be building reliable, observable, high-performing infrastructure while mentoring the team and eliminating technical debt that slows velocity.

Responsibilities

• Drive backend technical strategy by writing design documents, leading architecture reviews, and converting product vision into concrete engineering plans
• Steward platform health: oversee database performance, CI/CD pipelines, queuing systems, cost optimization, and observability across the backend stack
• Raise engineering standards through PR reviews, hands-on mentorship, and collaborative pairing sessions that set a high bar for design, testing, and operational excellence
• Represent backend engineering in cross-functional planning and ensure technical decisions align with user needs and product strategy
• Modernize legacy systems and pay down technical debt to improve scalability, developer velocity, and system resilience
• Partner with Product, Design, Analytics, and Machine Learning teams to deliver experimentation infrastructure and maintain a single source of truth across platforms
• Champion a user-centric mindset, grounding all technical decisions in their impact on the reading and listening experience

What You Bring

• Deep backend engineering experience with a proven track record building and scaling distributed systems at production scale
• Mastery of at least one modern backend language—Ruby (preferred), Scala, Go, or Python—with a commitment to clean, maintainable, and secure code
• Demonstrated expertise in system reliability, observability practices, SLO definition, metrics, and debugging complex distributed systems
• Technical leadership track record: setting architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and driving large-scale system migrations or modernization initiatives
• Comfort collaborating across disciplines with senior Product Managers, Designers, and ML Engineers, prioritizing great outcomes over being right
• Genuine enthusiasm for knowledge-sharing, architecture review participation, and shaping engineering culture at scale
• Deep empathy for users and the ability to translate that understanding into thoughtful system design

Bonus experience: Advanced Ruby skills, improving reliability or throughput in massive-scale systems, collaboration with ML recommendation teams, or familiarity with feature-flagging and experimentation platforms.

More About Scribdinc

Scribd, Inc. operates Scribd, Slideshare, Everand, and Fable—platforms that help billions of people move beyond access into genuine insight and expertise. Our culture embraces the GRIT mindset: setting ambitious Goals, delivering Results, contributing Innovative ideas, and strengthening our Team. We believe great work emerges when flexible work arrangements are balanced with intentional in-person collaboration. Scribd Flex allows employees to choose their working style and location while staying connected to our mission and each other. We value quality over speed, thoughtful design over quick fixes, and continuous improvement over mediocrity.

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