Lead Backend Software Engineer (Product API)

Philo’s Product API team builds and maintains the scalable API layer that powers personalization, search, and recommendations across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms. Responsibilities Provide technical leadership to members of the Product API team, coaching and mentoring new hires. Collaborate with product and client engineering teams to design and deliver GraphQL APIs that enable rich, performant user experiences while maintaining clean separation of concerns. Own and evolve critical product subsystems including recommendations, catalog, search, in-app notifications, user preferences, viewing history, collections, experiments, and feature flags. Build and maintain proxy and augmentation layers that integrate domain services into a unified API. Drive continuous improvements to the reliability, performance, scalability, and maintainability of Philo's product API infrastructure, ensuring sub‑second response times and high availability across all endpoints. Collaborate with data science and product analytics teams to instrument the API layer for experimentation, A/B testing, and feature rollouts. Build and enhance observability tools to proactively monitor API performance, identify bottlenecks, debug issues, and ensure optimal cache utilization across the system. Work with infrastructure teams to optimize database queries, implement effective caching strategies, and ensure DataServer scales efficiently as the user base grows. Qualifications 8+ years of software development experience. 2+ years of experience mentoring engineers (bonus for team‑lead experience). Strong experience designing and implementing GraphQL APIs at scale (bonus for complex schema design, query optimization, and federation). Proven record of building highly efficient and highly available backend services using Node.js, Ruby, Golang, Python, or similar. Experience operating in cloud environments with Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, or similar. Deep understanding of API design principles, RESTful and GraphQL patterns, caching strategies, and performance optimization. Experience with relational and non‑relational databases, modern data warehousing, and SQL. Systems thinking with ability to design cohesive API abstractions that separate concerns while accommodating diverse client needs. Experience building proxy and aggregation layers that unify multiple backend services. Familiarity with experimentation frameworks, feature‑flag systems, and A/B testing infrastructure. Strong collaboration and communication skills with cross‑functional teams. Knowledge of video streaming product ecosystems and API challenges for web, mobile, TV. Expertise in either product‑facing API development or machine‑learning model serving. Benefits Full health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family. 401(k) plan with employer contributions (100% match up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay). Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave. Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave.

• 2,000 annual vacation bonus.
• 5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance.
• 1,250 annual home‑office stipend for first year, $250 thereafter.
• 500/month bonus for employees who commit to working at least three days per week in office.

Generous commuter benefits ($315/month toward transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking). Free Gympass subscription. Projected Start Date: ASAP Status: Full‑time Location: San Francisco, CA; Brooklyn, NY; Cambridge, MA; or remote Compensation: Annual salary, company stock options, and health benefits. Salary ranges by region: Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Chicago: $189K – $215K Texas, Florida: $170K – $205K Philo is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to supporting candidates with arrest and conviction records per the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. #J-18808-Ljbffr Elea Ecuador