Staff Software Engineer, Omnichannel Notifications System

Snap•Palo Alto, NE

7d•Hybrid

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 operates Snapchat , a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world, and Specs Inc. , a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to making computing more human, in addition to Bitmoji , Saturn, and other digital services. We're looking for a Staff Engineer / Tech Lead to build the next generation of core infrastructure responsible for serving notifications across all notification surfaces. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role where you'll set the technical direction for our omnichannel notification system Our north star is simple to state and hard to do well: send the right notification to the right person, at the right time, on the right channel to delight and engage Snapchatters. Our technical vision is to give every Snap team one channel-agnostic API and inventory model, backed by centralized reachability, budgeting, ranking, rendering, delivery, and measurement. You'll have the opportunity to influence and set the technical direction for notifications orchestration, user experience, and the platform that powers it all.

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
Bachelors in technical field such as computer science, mathematics, statistics or equivalent years of experience
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
Experience building and operating reliable, scalable services in cloud technologies

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

Set the technical direction and long-term architecture for Snap’s omnichannel notification platform.
Design, build, and operate highly available, scalable backend services that deliver notifications across multiple channels and surfaces.
Define shared platform abstractions, APIs, data models, and mechanisms that enable product teams to integrate with notifications consistently.
Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning Engineering, Product, Data Science, Machine Learning, Design, and other partner teams.
Build systems for notification orchestration, channel selection, timing optimization, attention budgeting, ranking, targeting, experimentation, and measurement.
Establish engineering practices that improve availability, latency, observability, privacy, cost efficiency, and operational excellence.
Participate in incident response and lead systemic improvements to prevent recurring issues.
Translate ambiguous product and business needs into pragmatic technical strategies and multi-quarter roadmaps.
Mentor engineers, provide technical guidance, and raise the bar for design, implementation, and operational quality across the organization.
Drive alignment across teams and influence architecture and priorities without relying on direct authority.