Software Engineer, Backend – Level 5

Snap Inc.

Backend Engineer designing and operating critical scalable services for Snap. Collaborating across teams to deliver innovative solutions and uphold top engineering standards.

Posted 6/3/2026full-timePalo Alto • California, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesMid-LevelSenior💰 $209,000 - $313,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDistributed SystemsJavaKubernetesMicroservicesNoSQLPythonRedis

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, implement, and operate our most critical and scalable services - ranging from user identity services, friend graph, and our core persistence layer
Work across teams to understand product requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver the solutions needed to build innovative products
Evaluate, appropriately test, and debug your work, striving for high quality
Advocate for and apply best practices when it comes to availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management
Utilize AI tools and high velocity engineering workflows to design and ship scalable services while upholding rigorous standards for code correctness, security, and production ready quality code

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor's Degree in a relevant technical field such as computer science or equivalent years of practical work experience
6+ years of post-Bachelor’s software development experience; or Master’s degree in a technical field + 5+ year of post-grad software development experience; or PhD in a relevant technical field + 2+ years of post-grad software development experience
Experience with distributed systems
Experience with backend services or distributed systems
Experience in at least one of the following areas: Large-scale microservices and distributed systems, Cloud computing and storage systems, Infrastructure and large-scale system design, Security, Networking and data storage, Machine learning and natural language processing
Proven track record of operating highly-available systems at significant scale
Experience with Java, C++, and/or Python
Experience with NoSQL solutions, Memcache/Redis, Kubernetes, or Google/AWS services

Benefits

Comp & perks

paid parental leave
comprehensive medical coverage
emotional and mental health support programs
compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

software developmentdistributed systemsbackend servicesmicroservicescloud computinginfrastructure designsecuritynetworkingmachine learningnatural language processing

Soft Skills

collaborationproblem-solvingquality assuranceadvocacy for best practicescost management

Certifications

Bachelor's DegreeMaster's DegreePhD