Staff Software Engineer (Backend) - Fable Core

• Set technical direction for the Fable backend – write and socialize technical design documents, drive architecture reviews, and turn ambiguous product intent into concrete backend design.
• Own backend reliability and platform health, including staging, CI/CD, databases, queues, cost, and observability.
• Lead incident response and drive durable postmortems – write the doc, run the meeting, and make sure action items actually ship.
• Be the Fable backend voice in cross-team planning and the glue in cross-functional execution.
• Raise the ceiling for the team through PR review, mentorship, pairing, and by setting a high bar on design, testing, and ops.
• Build and evolve the Fable backend platform so the team can ship faster and more safely.
• Bring agentic engineering practices into the team’s day-to-day work and help the team adopt them effectively.

• 10+ years of backend experience, including meaningful time in Python/Django and at least one other stack (Go, Node, Java/Kotlin, or similar).
• Experience operating production systems on a major cloud – OLTP databases at scale, container orchestration, queueing, and CI/CD.
• A track record of owning incidents end-to-end, including the follow-through.
• The ability to write a Technical Design Document (TDD) that a staff peer trusts and a product lead can understand, and to turn ambiguous product intent into concrete backend design.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills – you hold your own with senior PM, design, and ML partners, and you care more about the system landing than about being right.
• A pragmatic default paired with a strong systems instinct – you look for root causes, not symptoms.
• Hands-on experience with agentic engineering tools and workflows in a real production setting.

• Experience with subscription and entitlements systems (Stripe, RevenueCat, App Store / Play billing).
• Experience leading a platform or infra function through a migration (on-prem→cloud, AWS↔GCP, monolith→services, or similar).
• Experience working alongside ML teams on recommendation or feed systems.

• Canada: Alberta, New Brunswick
• United States: North Carolina

Are you currently based in a location where Scribd, Inc. can employ you? Employees must have their primary residence in or near one of the following cities. This includes surrounding metro areas or locations within a typical commuting distance:

• United States: Atlanta | Austin | Boston | Dallas | Denver | Chicago | Houston | Jacksonville | Los Angeles | Miami | New York City | Phoenix | Portland | Sacramento | Salt Lake City | San Diego | San Francisco | Seattle | Washington D.C.
• Canada: Ottawa | Toronto | Vancouver
• Mexico: Mexico City

• In the state of California, the reasonably expected salary range is between $171,000 to $267,000.
• In the United States, outside of California, the reasonably expected salary range is between $141,000 to $254,000.
• In Canada, the reasonably expected salary range is between $179,000 CAD to $228,500 CAD.
• This position is also eligible for a competitive equity ownership, and a comprehensive and generous benefits package.
• Scribd Flex (flexible work model)
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• Mental health support and disability coverage
• Generous paid time off, including vacation, sick time, holidays, winter break, volunteer time, and sabbaticals
• Paid parental leave and family support benefits
• Retirement matching and employee equity
• Learning and development programs and professional growth opportunities
• Wellness and home office stipends
• Complimentary access to the Scribd, Inc. suite of products
• Enterprise access to leading AI tools

We want our interview process to be accessible to everyone. You can inform us of any reasonable adjustments we can make to better accommodate your needs by emailing [email protected] about the need for adjustments at any point in the interview process.