Staff Software Engineer, User and Friends, Level 6

Snap Inc.

Snap Inc.

Software Engineering
Bellevue, WA, USA · Los Angeles, CA, USA · Seattle, WA, USA
USD 195k-343k / year + Equity
Posted on Dec 17, 2025

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’s three core products are Snapchat, a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world; Lens Studio, an augmented reality platform that powers AR across Snapchat and other services; and its AR glasses, Spectacles.

We’re looking for a Staff Full Stack Engineer to lead our Web Platform team at Snap Inc!. In this role, you will set the technical direction for web architecture across the company, defining how we build scalable, high-performance, and discoverable web experiences. You will act as a technical lead, mentoring senior engineers and partnering with infrastructure teams to ensure reliability for high-traffic pages.

While this is a platform leadership role, deep experience designing large-scale web architectures that balance rich, client-side interactivity (UX) with server-side crawlability (SEO) is preferred. You understand the nuances of SSR (Server-Side Rendering), ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration), and Hydration strategies in Next.js/React to maximize both user performance and search indexation.

What you’ll do:

  • Architectural Leadership: Architect and lead the implementation of the core Web Platform using Next.js, React, Web Assembly, and TypeScript to power both logged-out and logged-in experiences at scale.

  • Platform Strategy: Define the long-term technical roadmap for web infrastructure, including server-side rendering strategies, static site generation, and caching layers.

  • SEO & Discoverability: Lead the strategy for technical SEO foundations—ensuring the platform natively supports optimal site architecture, crawlability, canonicalization, and structured data.

  • Tooling & Efficiency: Build advanced tooling, automation, and template systems (e.g., content feeds, diagnostics dashboards) that enable other product teams to ship faster while maintaining high quality and performance standards.

  • Performance Engineering: Drive initiatives to optimize Core Web Vitals, browser layout rendering, and JavaScript execution across the organization, identifying and resolving complex scalability issues.

  • Cross-Functional Impact: Collaborate with data, growth, security, and infrastructure partners to design experimentation frameworks and build feedback loops into the core system.

  • Mentorship: Mentor L5 and senior engineers, leading code reviews and technical design discussions to grow engineering expertise across the team.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:

  • Expert Full Stack Proficiency: Mastery of Javascript/TypeScript, HTML, and CSS, along with backend languages such as Java, Golang, NodeJs, or Python.

  • Modern Web Architecture: Deep expertise in React and Next.js (or similar server-rendered frameworks) with a focus on component-based architectures and responsive design.

  • System Design: Proven ability to design distributed systems and APIs for content retrieval, employing advanced caching, ranking, and routing strategies.

  • Engineering Excellence: Champion of domain-driven design, functional programming principles, and rigorous testing methodologies (unit, integration, and end-to-end).

  • Resilient UI: Experience writing code for user interface components that are resilient, reusable, and accessible.

  • Optimization: Specific experience optimizing high-traffic applications for Core Web Vitals and resolving performance bottlenecks in both frontend and backend systems.

Minimum Qualifications:

  • Bachelor's Degree in a relevant technical field such as computer science or equivalent years of practical work 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.

  • Extensive experience with full stack web development and architecture.

  • Experience leading technical projects or teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Advanced Frontend Tech: Experience with WebGL, Canvas, WebAssembly, Service Workers, or other advanced front-end technology.

  • Scale & Infrastructure: Experience with GraphQL, large-scale microservices, distributed systems, Kubernetes, and cloud services (AWS/Google).

  • Experience integrating machine learning-based systems for content classification or ranking.

  • Passion for building rich, innovative user experiences and setting the standard for engineering quality.

If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please don’t be shy and provide us some information.

"Default Together" Policy at Snap: At Snap Inc. we believe that being together in person helps us build our culture faster, reinforce our values, and serve our community, customers and partners better through dynamic collaboration. To reflect this, we practice a “default together” approach and expect our team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.

At Snap, we believe that having a team of diverse backgrounds and voices working together will enable us to create innovative products that improve the way people live and communicate. Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. EOE, including disability/vets.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, where applicable).

Our Benefits: Snap Inc. is its own community, so we’ve got your back! We do our best to make sure you and your loved ones have everything you need to be happy and healthy, on your own terms. Our benefits are built around your needs and include paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success!

Compensation

In the United States, work locations are assigned a pay zone which determines the salary range for the position. The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. The starting pay may be negotiable within the salary range for the position. These pay zones may be modified in the future.

Zone A (CA, WA, NYC):

The base salary range for this position is $229,000-$343,000 annually.


Zone B:

The base salary range for this position is $218,000-$326,000 annually.

Zone C:

The base salary range for this position is $195,000-$292,000 annually.

This position is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs.