Staff Software Engineer - Collaborative Web Platform
About The Position
Pantheon is building the next generation of web content infrastructure: a real-time, collaborative platform that redefines how teams create, publish, and manage content on the modern web. This is a zero-to-one role where the product is early, the architecture is being defined, and the decisions made will shape how thousands of developers and content teams experience the web for years to come. The role involves inventing the foundational layer of a new product category at the intersection of developer tooling, visual editing, and cloud-native content infrastructure. Pantheon is uniquely positioned to build the content management experience that the modern web deserves, leveraging its deep roots in the web platform, global CDN, and sophisticated branching platform. This role requires a technical leader and hands-on builder who will work across the full stack, from APIs and real-time synchronization services to visual editing interfaces and component systems. The engineer will partner closely with product and design to shape the architecture, make build-vs-buy decisions, define engineering standards, and accelerate a small, focused team. The role demands both breadth and depth, with comfort in distributed state management and crafting delightful, low-latency editing experiences.
Requirements
- 10+ years of overall software engineering experience, with a strong track record of ownership across the full product lifecycle.
- Genuine full-stack capability — you have shipped production systems on both the backend (APIs, data services, cloud infrastructure) and frontend (interactive UIs, component systems, browser performance).
- Experience with real-time or collaborative systems — whether content editing, multiplayer applications, event-driven architectures, or live data synchronization.
- Cloud-native fluency: you are comfortable designing and operating services in GCP, AWS, Cloudflare, or Azure, with experience in containerization and modern deployment pipelines.
- API design expertise: you have strong opinions about REST, GraphQL, and event-driven interfaces — and know when to apply each.
- Frontend architecture chops: you understand component modeling, state management, rendering performance, and the browser platform at a level that goes well beyond framework familiarity.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
- Owners mindset: you are energized by ambiguity, take initiative without being asked, and feel personal ownership over outcomes — not just outputs.
- Clear communicator: you can translate complex technical tradeoffs for product partners, write crisp design docs, and give feedback that makes engineers better.
- Systems thinker: you see how architectural decisions today create optionality or debt tomorrow, and you make those tradeoffs consciously.
- Builder's patience: zero-to-one work is non-linear. You understand that the path to a great product involves iteration, dead ends, and genuine collaboration — and you thrive in that environment.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with visual or low-code editing interfaces (page builders, WYSIWYG editors, drag-and-drop component systems).
- Familiarity with CMS architectures — headless, hybrid, or traditional — and their tradeoffs in real-world deployments.
- Experience building developer-facing platforms or extension systems (SDKs, plugin APIs, CLI tooling).
- Contributions to open-source projects in the web platform or developer tooling ecosystem.
Responsibilities
- Design and own the architecture of a real-time content platform — including data models, sync protocols, API surface, and client-side state management.
- Drive technical decisions that balance developer ergonomics, operational simplicity, and long-term scalability across a cloud-native, multi-tenant environment.
- Define engineering standards for the team: API design conventions, testing strategy, performance budgets, and observability practices.
- Evaluate and select third-party services, libraries, and infrastructure components — with a clear framework for build vs. buy tradeoffs.
- Build backend services that power collaborative editing, conflict resolution, and content delivery — operating reliably at scale across a distributed cloud infrastructure.
- Build frontend systems that enable visual, real-time editing experiences — including page builders and publishing workflows.
- Own the integration layer between the editing experience and the underlying platform: APIs, webhooks, and the developer-facing extension model.
- Contribute meaningfully to UX architecture — not just implementation — by collaborating with design on interaction models for novel, stateful editing flows.
- Serve as a technical partner to product and design — translating ambiguous problem spaces into concrete technical strategies and phased delivery plans.
- Mentor and elevate engineers on the team through code review, pairing, architecture feedback, and clear documentation of technical decisions.
- Engage with customers and partners to pressure-test architectural assumptions and ensure the platform addresses real-world integration patterns.
Benefits
- Industry competitive compensation and equity plan
- Paid Time Off (PTO), Paid Sick Leave (PSL) and 11 Paid Company Holidays
- Full medical coverage (Extended health care, dental, vision)
- Top-of-line equipment
- Monthly allowance for wellness, reading and access to LinkedIn Learning for continued development
- Events and activities both team-based and company wide that inspire, educate and cultivate
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
Associate degree
