Senior Staff Software Engineer (Backend Platform)

• The Backend Platform team builds the foundational systems and infrastructure that power Patreon’s creator platform. We’re responsible for the core backend services, APIs, databases, infrastructure, and developer tooling that enable product teams across the company to ship quickly, reliably, and at scale

• This team is growing and investing in foundational platform capabilities that will support Patreon’s next phase of scale and product expansion

• Define and drive the technical strategy for Patreon’s backend platform and foundational infrastructure

• Lead architecture and implementation of scalable distributed systems, APIs, event-driven systems, and platform services

• Lead modernization efforts across backend architecture, service boundaries, data access patterns, and infrastructure

• Establish technical standards and best practices around reliability, performance, scalability, and maintainability

• Partner with product engineering teams to ensure platform capabilities align with business and product needs

• Shape cross-functional technical decision-making at organizational scale

• Help evolve operational maturity around incident management, resiliency, and production excellence

• Mentor Staff and Senior engineers across the organization through design reviews, technical leadership, and hands-on collaboration

Benefits

• Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision plans are available to our US employees and their dependents. Our plans have a nationwide network and we also cover a primary care concierge membership.

• Balance & Wellness: We offer a generous Flexible Time Off policy, in addition to days throughout the year where everyone takes the same day off to recharge our batteries. Employees and their dependents also have access to therapy, coaching, and Employee Assistance Programs services.

• Family Planning: We provide 20 weeks of paid parental leave, fertility, adoption, and surrogacy benefits, as well as an annual stipend for new additions to your families (including pets!).

• Lifestyle & Learning: You’ll have stipends to fund your personal lifestyle and to support your favorite creators on Patreon, as well as an annual stipend for learning and development.

• Hybrid Work: Our offices are in San Francisco, New York, and Porto. Plus, we have more teammates working remotely around the world.

• Financial Support: We offer employer matching for our retirement plans and Health Savings Account (HSA), as well as access to 1:1 financial guidance with a Certified Financial Planner.- Extensive experience building large-scale backend systems, with depth in distributed systems and platform architecture (typically 10+ years, or equivalent demonstrated expertise)

• Experience with databases, caching systems, and storage technologies (e.g. MySQL, Postgres, Redis, DynamoDB)

• Experience in performance optimization across APIs, databases, caching layers, and distributed services

• Proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Python, Go, Java, or Rust

• Strong operational excellence mindset, including incident response and production debugging

• Deep expertise in distributed systems, high-throughput APIs, and low-latency architectures that support millions of DAUs

• Ability to communicate complex architectural trade-offs clearly in writing and in cross-functional forums

• Experience mentoring Staff and Senior engineers and contributing to engineering culture through design reviews, documentation, or team standards

• Experience operating systems in cloud-native environments such as AWS and Kubernetes-based infrastructure

• Strong understanding of data modeling, storage systems, caching, queues, and event-driven architectures

• If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you