Staff Engineer, Product Engineering – Backend

Strava

Staff Engineer leading backend systems for Strava's athlete-facing features. Designing and shipping technical solutions in a collaborative environment with product and design teams.

Posted 6/23/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $249,000 - $278,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCassandraCloudDistributed SystemsDockerGoKafkaKubernetesMySQLNoSQLPythonRedisRubyScala

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, build, and ship the backend systems behind Strava's athlete-facing features, owning them from idea to production.
Act as tech lead for pods of engineers — scoping work, breaking it down, coordinating delivery, and ensuring we are making the right decisions.
Partner closely with product managers and designers to take features 0→1, shaping what gets built and how, not just executing a handed-down spec.
Solve tough technical problems and lead the pod to execute, stepping across the stack into client or adjacent systems when the problem calls for it.
Move quickly on new product bets while keeping an eye on reliability, performance, and maintainability.
Work across Strava's backend stack — Ruby, Scala, Go, MySQL, Redis, Cassandra, Kafka, and Kubernetes — and pick up adjacent surfaces as needed.
Mentor engineers on the pod and across the Strava tech team.

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of professional backend/server engineering experience, with a track record of shipping consumer products.
Experience acting as a tech lead — facilitating team processes and driving execution.
A bias toward building and shipping: you've taken features from 0→1 and care about getting real product into athletes' hands, not just designing systems in the abstract.
Strong system design skills for distributed systems at scale: making architecture decisions, defending trade-offs, and thinking about how a system evolves over time.
Proficiency in at least one of Strava's backend languages (Scala, Go, Python) with comfort picking up others, and willingness to work across the stack when needed.
Experience with distributed systems technologies like Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure (AWS).
Experience with relational and NoSQL databases in production (we use MySQL, Redis, and Cassandra).
Resilience with changes and the ability to navigate ambiguous situations, creating clarity for yourself and others.
An ability to look around corners and predict the future, making decisions now that set us up for success down the line.
A genuine interest in working closely with product and design partners and leading a team to prioritize the right work and deliver it well. You're interested in more than just putting your head down on an assigned project.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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Hard Skills & Tools

backend engineeringsystem designdistributed systemsRubyScalaGoMySQLRedisCassandraKafka

Soft Skills

leadershipteam facilitationproblem solvingresiliencenavigating ambiguitymentoringcollaborationdecision makingprioritizationcommunication