Staff Software Engineer, Public API

Etsy•Brooklyn, NY

13h•Hybrid

About The Position

The OpenAPI team works on Etsy’s public API provided for sellers and 3rd party developers. We build and maintain technical capabilities to enable our users to integrate with our API and build apps to extend Etsy tooling. We also work closely with various product teams at Etsy when they build new features on our team’s platform. We are looking for a backend engineer to join our team where you will collaborate closely with a dedicated team of backend engineers, a product manager, and an engineering manager. You will work on a variety of back-end projects to improve the developer experience and stability of OpenAPI, such as system performance optimization, agentic tooling, security enhancements, testing functionality, and webhooks. You will also provide guidance to internal teams at Etsy to assist them in rolling out new features on OpenAPI and managing breaking changes. As a staff engineer, you will partner with team leads to set the technical direction of the team. This will involve keeping tabs on recurring pain points on our platform, potential opportunities that arise across the company, and industry trends. Based on this expertise, you will help decide which tracks of work our team pursues. You will be responsible for the design of larger projects and will mentor junior teammates on designing smaller projects.

Requirements

Experience with object-oriented software languages. The majority of work developed will be in PHP.
Experience building and maintaining REST APIs (especially managing breaking changes) and related technical capabilities.
Experience using observability tools to monitor API usage and related metrics, such as Grafana, HoneyComb, or Google Cloud Logging.
A strong sense of ownership for our platform
The ability to think critically and independently to ensure we are building the right things in the right way
Close attention to detail, with the ability to translate business requirements to production-ready code
Strong communication that adapts to technical and non-technical audiences
Curiosity and ability to learn autonomously
Experience working with AI Agents and related tools, like MCP servers and skills

Responsibilities

Build and maintain software written in PHP
Evolve the OpenAPI platform by identifying areas of friction and implementing features that can measurably improve Developer Experience.
Partner with product engineering teams to build and roll out new features
Debug hairy issues spanning multiple systems to determine the root cause and either route it to the appropriate owner or fix yourself
Collaborate with cross functional partners - product, analytics, research, etc - to determine the highest impact projects that align with our team’s strategy
Work with teammates and other subject matter experts as necessary to scope out new platform projects and break them down into multiple stages for delivery, identifying and resolving architectural trade-offs
Write high quality code and mentor your teammates to do the same through PR reviews, pairing, and general mentoring
Steer the technical direction of the team, from which projects we work on to which team processes we follow