About the Role
The Lead Backend Engineer (Product API) position at Philo focuses on providing technical leadership for the Product API team, which powers personalized experiences for millions of users across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms. This role involves designing and evolving scalable GraphQL APIs, integrating domain services, and ensuring high reliability and performance to support features like show catalogs, recommendations, and notifications. Candidates in this senior engineering position will contribute to the technical roadmap, mentor team members, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver innovative streaming solutions.
Key Responsibilities
- Offer technical guidance to the Product API team on system architecture, design decisions, and mentoring new hires to foster skill development.
- Work closely with product and client engineering teams to create GraphQL APIs that deliver efficient, performant user experiences while maintaining clear separation of concerns.
- Develop and maintain key subsystems such as recommendations, search, notifications, user preferences, viewing history, and experimentation tools.
- Build proxy and augmentation layers to unify services from video infrastructure, recommendations, and search into a cohesive API for seamless integration.
- Improve API reliability, scalability, and performance, targeting sub-second response times and high availability for all endpoints.
- Partner with data science and analytics teams to enable A/B testing, feature rollouts, and data-driven decisions through API instrumentation.
- Enhance observability tools, optimize database queries, implement caching strategies, and collaborate on infrastructure scaling to handle growing user demands.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of software development experience, with 2+ years mentoring engineers or guiding technical projects.
- Strong expertise in designing and scaling GraphQL APIs, including schema design, query optimization, and federation techniques.
- Proven ability to build efficient, high-availability backend services using languages like Golang, NodeJS, Ruby, or Python.
- Experience in cloud environments with tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS, along with API design principles, REST/GraphQL patterns, and performance optimization.
- Familiarity with handling large datasets, relational/non-relational databases, SQL querying, and systems thinking for cohesive API abstractions.
- Knowledge of experimentation frameworks, feature flags, A/B testing, and collaboration across product, design, and data science teams.
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive annual salary ranging from $170,000 to $235,000, depending on experience and location (e.g., higher in San Francisco and New York City, adjusted for other major cities and remote setups).
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their families.
- 401(k) plan with employer matching up to 3% of pay and 50% on the next 2%.
- Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave, plus up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave.
- Professional development stipend of $5,250 annually, home office setup allowance, and wellness perks like Gympass subscription.
- Office-related incentives including a $500 monthly bonus for hybrid work commitments and commuter benefits in select locations.
- Additional perks such as a $2,000 vacation bonus, dog-friendly offices, and stock options as part of the compensation package.
How to Apply
Interested candidates can apply directly via the Apply Now button above. Visit the original listing for full application details.