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Palo Alto, California, United States
Onsite
Snap Inc is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.
The Company operates Snapchat, a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world, and Specs Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to making computing more human, in addition to Bitmoji, Saturn, and other digital services.
We're looking for a Staff Engineer / Tech Lead to build the next generation of core infrastructure responsible for serving notifications across all notification surfaces. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role where you'll set the technical direction for our omnichannel notification system
Our north star is simple to state and hard to do well: send the right notification to the right person, at the right time, on the right channel to delight and engage Snapchatters.
Our technical vision is to give every Snap team one channel-agnostic API and inventory model, backed by centralized reachability, budgeting, ranking, rendering, delivery, and measurement. You'll have the opportunity to influence and set the technical direction for notifications orchestration, user experience, and the platform that powers it all.
What you'll do:
Set the technical direction and long-term architecture for Snap’s omnichannel notification platform.
Design, build, and operate highly available, scalable backend services that deliver notifications across multiple channels and surfaces.
Define shared platform abstractions, APIs, data models, and mechanisms that enable product teams to integrate with notifications consistently.
Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning Engineering, Product, Data Science, Machine Learning, Design, and other partner teams.
Build systems for notification orchestration, channel selection, timing optimization, attention budgeting, ranking, targeting, experimentation, and measurement.
Establish engineering practices that improve availability, latency, observability, privacy, cost efficiency, and operational excellence.
Participate in incident response and lead systemic improvements to prevent recurring issues.
Translate ambiguous product and business needs into pragmatic technical strategies and multi-quarter roadmaps.
Mentor engineers, provide technical guidance, and raise the bar for design, implementation, and operational quality across the organization.
Drive alignment across teams and influence architecture and priorities without relying on direct authority.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:
Experience designing, building, and operating backend services or distributed systems at significant scale.
Proven track record of owning highly-available, mission‑critical systems, including on‑call participation, incident response, and driving systemic fixes.
Ability to set technical vision and lead complex, cross‑functional initiatives over multiple quarters, balancing architectural quality, reliability, and product velocity.
Strong foundation in system design (APIs, data models, storage, pub/sub, queues, and workflow orchestration) and performance/latency optimization.
Deep experience with observability (metrics, logging, tracing, dashboards) and using data to debug, harden, and evolve large-scale systems.
Excellent collaboration and communication skills; able to work effectively with Product, DS, ML, Design, and other engineering teams to align on requirements and trade‑offs.
Ability to mentor and uplevel engineers, provide clear technical guidance, and create structures that make the team more effective over time
Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelors in technical field such as computer science, mathematics, statistics or equivalent years of experience
9+ years of post-Bachelor’s software development experience; or a Master’s degree in a technical field + 8+ year of post-grad software development experience; or a PhD in a related technical field + 5+ years of post-grad software development experience
Experience building and operating reliable, scalable services in cloud technologies
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience with one or more of: Java, Go, C++, and/or Python.
Experience with NoSQL data stores, caches (e.g., Memcache/Redis), and cloud services (Google Cloud, AWS, or similar).
Experience with pub/sub and task‑queue systems (e.g., Kafka, Google Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks, or internal equivalents) in high‑throughput environments.
Experience with notification, messaging, growth, or experimentation platforms, including ranking, targeting, and A/B testing at scale.
Demonstrated ability to lead technical strategy for a team or domain, influencing architecture, reliability, and long‑term roadmaps across multiple teams.
If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please don’t be shy and provide us some information.
"Default Together" Policy at Snap: At Snap Inc. we believe that being together in person helps us build our culture faster, reinforce our values, and serve our community, customers and partners better through dynamic collaboration. To reflect this, we practice a “default together” approach and expect our team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.
At Snap, we believe that having a team of diverse backgrounds and voices working together will enable us to create innovative products that improve the way people live and communicate. Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. EOE, including disability/vets.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, where applicable).
Our Benefits: Snap Inc. is its own community, so we’ve got your back! We do our best to make sure you and your loved ones have everything you need to be happy and healthy, on your own terms. Our benefits are built around your needs and include paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success!
Compensation
In the United States, work locations are assigned a pay zone which determines the salary range for the position. The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. The starting pay may be negotiable within the salary range for the position. These pay zones may be modified in the future.
The base salary range for this position is $229,000-$343,000 annually.