Staff Software Engineer, Backend - Websites Fundamentals

<p data-pm-slice="1 3 []">Squarespace is looking for the first Staff Engineer for our newly formed Websites Fundamentals platform team in Dublin. You will be the foundational technical leader responsible for building the platform bedrock upon which our product ecosystem sits. You will solve deep, lower-level architectural challenges to eliminate technical friction and empower our engineering teams to move with unprecedented velocity.</p> <p>You will design and implement high-performance, scalable improvements that will be the foundation of our future scale. You will work across the senior technical leaders to define the long-term technical roadmap for the Platform team, ensuring every engineering decision aligns with our goal of sustainable, long-term ownership.</p> <p>While you are a strategist, you remain a practitioner. You will lead by example, writing elegant, robust code for our most complex foundational requirements. Your success is measured by the simplicity you provide to others. By hardening our core platform bedrock you will build the abstractions that empower engineers to focus on innovation rather than wrestling with the cognitive load of navigating deeply coupled dependencies or managing the underlying complexity of our platform's foundational health.</p> <p>You will act as the primary technical partner for the newly forming team, setting the standard for engineering excellence and operational rigor.</p> <p>You will report directly to the Engineering Manager for Websites Applications in Dublin. This is a hybrid role working 3 days per week in our Dublin Office.</p> <h2><strong>You'll Get To…</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Be the architect for a major area of our business</li> <li>Influence: Drive best practices for engineering excellence and technical leadership, influence design reviews, question assumptions, point out pitfalls and foster shared understanding</li> <li>Guide: Provide guidance to the engineering team to help architect solutions at scale and become the goto whiteboard partner for the team.</li> <li>Mentor: Multiply your effectiveness through influence by growing our experienced team of Software Engineers of several levels.</li> <li>Plan: Tie technical investments to business priorities, lead architecture discussions and design reviews, and contribute to product roadmap planning</li> <li>Collaborate: Work with engineering teams across the company</li> <li>Write: Create medium to long term technical strategies for our websites platform. Clearly and concisely write that strategy and collaborate with engineers across the organization to implement the strategy</li> <li>Code: Wants to contribute directly to projects that require more senior technical expertise or to quickly address ambiguous engineering challenges across the organization</li> </ul> <h2>Who We're Looking For</h2> <ul> <li>Have 8+ years of building large-scale software and highly available and reliable distributed systems</li> <li>Have experience building and implementing long-term technical strategy</li> <li>Want to expand your technical influence and effect across teams while still being a hands-on individual contributor</li> <li>Ability to create effective designs to solve complex problems and lead teams to implement them</li> <li>Enjoy exploring the intersection between product and engineering</li> <li>Significant experience using multiple programming languages (especially Java) and a broad range of tools like Springboot, hibernate, databases, etc.</li> <li>Effective communication skills with ability to give impactful feedback to colleagues</li> <li>Hands-on approach and pragmatic attitude in turning ideas into working software</li> </ul> <h2><strong>Benefits Perks</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Health insurance with 100% covered premiums for you, your spouse or partner and your dependent children including medical, dental, and vision</li> <li>Life and Income Protection</li> <li>Fertility and adoption benefits</li> <li>Headspace mindfulness app subscr ... (truncated, view full listing at source)