Senior Software Engineer, GraphQL Platform

The New York Times • New York, NY

170d • $140,000 - $155,000

About The Position

This team manages the New York Times' GraphQL platform. Our mission is to provide a robust API layer powering our products and internal systems. We are in an exciting period of modernization, driving scale and reliability as our upstream data complexity grows. We are seeking a GraphQL and Developer Experience enthusiast to join our team and contribute to our mission-critical distributed platform.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software development experience with a focus on API development
• Expertise developing and scaling GraphQL APIs in production, with practical knowledge of federation principles (Apollo or similar)
• Background includes at least one statically typed backend language (we use Go)
• Familiar with automation for code quality, release management, and developer workflow improvements
• Experience delivering projects from design to implementation, testing and documentation
• Value learning and improvement, sharing knowledge, and welcoming constructive feedback

Nice To Haves

• Background working with Apollo GraphQL (Router, Federation, schema design, plugins/extensions)
• Knowledge of performance optimization for APIs under high traffic, CDN integration, caching, and multi-region operations
• Experience troubleshooting and improving observability for a platform distributed across multiple systems
• Experience deploying and maintaining applications on Kubernetes

Responsibilities

• Develop new platform offerings while ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of our GraphQL platform as it continues to grow
• Lead by example in establishing and enforcing GraphQL schema design and governance best practices, participating in platform-wide schema working groups, and reviewing/mentoring cross-team contributions
• Contribute to the platform's automation, developer tooling, and onboarding/kick-off guides for service adopters and subgraph contributors
• Support on-call, incident response, and troubleshooting efforts for platform-level escalations
• Mentor team members, promoting technical excellence and a culture of respect and constructive feedback
• Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world

Benefits

• The annual base pay range for this role is between $140,000—$155,000 USD

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees