Staff Software Engineer, Growth Notifications, Level 6

Snap Inc.•Los Angeles, CA

6d•Onsite

About The Position

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’s three core products are Snapchat, a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world; Lens Studio, an augmented reality platform that powers AR across Snapchat and other services; and its AR glasses, Spectacles. We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join Snap! Growth Notifications aims to drive critical business metrics (e.g. DAU/MAU, story views) through relevant, timely, and personalized but unsolicited communications (‘nudges’) through suitable available channels (e.g. app push, email, sms) in a cost-effective manner while maintaining data accuracy and platform integrity. We drive user growth and engagement by helping the user discover timely, relevant, and personalized content that entices the user to repeatedly come back to the platform and engage in retentive activities. We use interruptive communication channels such as app push notifications, smses, and emails, which demand immediate user attention, and as such, are highly effective in driving user action. What you’ll do: Design, implement, and operate highly available backend services that power Snapchat’s growth notification platform across multiple communication channels, serving hundreds of millions of users. Own the end-to-end architecture for Snap’s Growth Notification systems, with a focus on reliability, observability, cost efficiency, and sustainable DAU/MAU and retention impact. Lead technical direction for the Growth Notifications team: define multi‑quarter roadmaps, make high‑quality architectural decisions, and drive large, ambiguous projects from concept through launch and iteration. Collaborate across teams to integrate upstream signals and downstream use cases into a coherent, scalable growth notifications platform. Advocate for and apply best practices in distributed systems, including SLIs/SLOs, incident management, cost management, and safe, iterative delivery in a high‑leverage, DAU‑critical system.

Requirements

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
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
Demonstrated track record of building and operating reliable, scalable services in cloud technologies with a strong focus on observability, cost efficiency, and incident response

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and operate highly available backend services that power Snapchat’s growth notification platform across multiple communication channels, serving hundreds of millions of users.
Own the end-to-end architecture for Snap’s Growth Notification systems, with a focus on reliability, observability, cost efficiency, and sustainable DAU/MAU and retention impact.
Lead technical direction for the Growth Notifications team: define multi‑quarter roadmaps, make high‑quality architectural decisions, and drive large, ambiguous projects from concept through launch and iteration.
Collaborate across teams to integrate upstream signals and downstream use cases into a coherent, scalable growth notifications platform.
Advocate for and apply best practices in distributed systems, including SLIs/SLOs, incident management, cost management, and safe, iterative delivery in a high‑leverage, DAU‑critical system.