Staff Software Engineer, Backend Platform

San Francisco, CA · Remote · full time · Lead / Staff / Principal

$257,500 – $386,000

Listed on Patreon’s own careers site. You apply with them directly — we never stand between you and the employer.

What this role is

This Staff-level backend engineering role focuses on designing and scaling Patreon's foundational platform systems, APIs, and infrastructure that support hundreds of thousands of creators. The position suits experienced distributed systems engineers who thrive on architectural challenges and mentoring others in a high-scale environment.

Our summary, not Patreon’s wording. The full posting is on their site.

Skills this role names

What they ask for

Required

6–8+ years building large-scale backend systems or equivalent expertise
Deep expertise in distributed systems and platform architecture
Experience designing high-throughput APIs and low-latency systems at scale
Knowledge of databases, caching systems, and storage technologies
Understanding of data modeling, storage, caching, queues, and event-driven patterns
Performance optimization experience across APIs, databases, and distributed services
Operational excellence mindset including incident response and production debugging
Experience running systems in cloud-native environments like AWS and Kubernetes
Proficiency in at least one backend language (Python, Go, Java, or Rust)
Ability to communicate architectural trade-offs clearly across teams
Experience mentoring senior and mid-level engineers