Staff Software Engineer, Spam and Abuse

Snap Inc. • Palo Alto, CA

9d • $195,000 - $343,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Snap Inc. is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to serve as the technical lead for its Spam & Abuse team. The team protects Snapchat accounts by preventing spam, bot, and automated account activity; detecting and stopping account takeover; securing login, recovery, and sessions; and turning intelligence about adversaries into live defenses. It also operates a shared detection and enforcement platform that makes real-time account decisions and publishes account risk for teams across Snap. The related Secure Mobile Client team develops client and backend mechanisms for sensitive flows, including registration, login, and recovery, as well as on-device safety features such as in-app reporting and end-to-end encryption.

The technical lead will set the technical vision and architecture across these areas, guide investment decisions, lead complex cross-cutting system design, and raise the team's engineering and operational standards. The role works with engineering managers, product, data science, operations, policy, and legal partners across Snap. It also includes mentoring engineers, improving reliability, latency, and quality in systems critical to registration, login, and messaging, and leading technical responses to significant spam, abuse, and security incidents. The engineer will use AI tools to design and ship scalable services while maintaining rigorous standards for correctness, security, and production readiness.

Snap follows a “default together” approach, expecting team members to work in an office 4 or more days per week. The position is eligible for RSUs. U.S. base salary ranges are $229,000–$343,000 annually in Zone A (CA, WA, NYC), $218,000–$326,000 in Zone B, and $195,000–$292,000 in Zone C. Starting pay depends on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field such as Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 9 years of software development experience; alternatively, a Master’s degree with at least 8 years of experience, or a PhD with at least 5 years of experience.
• Experience as a technical lead, domain expert, or owner of complex technical initiatives.
• Experience building systems that detect or mitigate spam, abuse, fraud, account takeover, or other malicious behavior.
• Deep expertise designing, building, and operating large-scale, low-latency distributed backend systems.
• Strong understanding of spam, fraud, fake account, account takeover, or other adversarial abuse problems and defensive approaches.
• Ability to set technical direction across multiple teams or areas and align engineers, managers, and partners.
• Skill in solving open, ambiguous problems and balancing speed, precision, and impact on legitimate users.
• Strong mentorship skills and a track record of improving the capabilities of other engineers.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including explaining complex technical decisions to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proficiency in Go, Java, or Python, and comfort working with big data tools such as BigQuery.
• Strong respect for user privacy and security.
• Proficiency in or strong aptitude for using AI tools to streamline development, with the judgment to audit generated output for architectural integrity, performance bottlenecks, and security risks.

Nice To Haves

• Experience leading trust, integrity, anti-abuse, or account security engineering at a large consumer platform.
• Experience with real-time risk scoring and enforcement systems, and working with machine learning teams to put models into production.
• Experience with authentication, identity, session security, or mobile client security.
• Experience with security-sensitive client and backend systems such as device attestation or end-to-end encryption.
• Track record of setting multi-year technical strategy and delivering it through others.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical vision and multi-year architecture for Spam & Abuse, spanning spam and bot detection, account takeover defense, the detection and enforcement platform, and secure mobile client flows.
• Lead design of the team's most complex, cross-cutting systems and review others' designs to maintain coherent architecture across areas.
• Drive technical strategy with engineering managers and product, and translate it into executable roadmaps.
• Mentor and develop engineers across the team, fostering technical excellence, ownership, and operational rigor.
• Partner with engineering, product, data science, operations, policy, and legal teams to integrate account risk and enforcement into Snap surfaces.
• Improve reliability, latency, and quality of systems critical to registration, login, and messaging, and lead technical response to major spam, abuse, and security incidents.
• Stay ahead of adversary adaptations and ensure defenses are designed to withstand them.
• Use AI tools to design and ship scalable services while upholding standards for code correctness, security, and production readiness.

Benefits

• Paid parental leave.
• Comprehensive medical coverage.
• Emotional and mental health support programs.
• Compensation packages that allow employees to share in Snap’s long-term success.
• Equity in the form of RSUs.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior