Staff Software Engineer (Scala), Krakow

Quick Facts

• Role: Staff Software Engineer, Backend

• Focus: Backend engineering leadership for scalable, reliable distributed systems

Description

Join a backend engineering team operating at large scale, handling tens of billions of requests/events and ingesting billions of social messages daily while shipping frequent production deployments. Ensure service excellence and maintain robust, scalable technical foundations by leveraging Scala, MySQL, Clickhouse, Redis, Kafka, NSQ, AWS, Python, and Java.

Responsibilities

• Lead the team through complex product and technical roadmaps, ensuring successful delivery outcomes.

• Improve processes, systems, and tools used to deliver quality products and champion technical initiatives.

• Build processes to proactively identify and address technical issues during delivery or escalate larger initiatives for prioritization.

• Provide technical mentoring; facilitate learning through pairing, documentation, and workshops.

Requirements

• 7+ years experience developing and supporting software in a production environment.

• 5+ years experience programming in object-oriented languages such as Scala and/or other JVM languages.

• 5+ years experience with functional programming paradigms and ecosystems.

• 3+ years experience leading engineering projects and initiatives, including design/development/implementation of distributed systems and delivery of reliable services.

• 3+ years experience prioritizing technical improvements with cross-functional teams and/or driving technical vision.

• Professional English proficiency in verbal and written communication.

• Based in or near Kraków; occasional availability to work from the office.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years experience developing and supporting scalable, distributed backend services.

• 3 years experience working with SQL databases.

• Professional Polish proficiency in verbal and written communication.

How You’ll Grow

• Within 1 month: complete new hire training; learn team OKRs and roadmap priorities; ramp up on identity and access management technical vision; deploy/make production changes; understand SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs; collaborate cross-functionally; embrace code reviews and pairing.

• Within 3 months: act as technical owner for the access domain; lead first feature delivery with MVP and iterative milestones; decompose work into small units for easy estimation; actively participate in code reviews/retrospectives; build a positive team culture; be first line of defense during support duty.

• Within 6 months: design/create/maintain access platform solutions at internet scale cost-effectively; enhance monitoring and alerting; identify and remediate technical debt and performance bottlenecks; partner on technical strategy iteration; lead technical design planning and peer reviews; mentor engineers.

• Within 12 months: become go-to expert for team systems; use cross-organization connections to identify platform needs; own cross-organizational projects/architecture with project management and consensus building; mitigate delivery/deadline risks via transparent communication; contribute to in-house technical presentations and workshops; surprise with unique ideas.

Benefits

• Stock Ownership (RSUs)

• Generous Paid Time Off: 26 paid days annually plus bank holidays and extra Rest & Recharge days

• Paid Parental Leave: 20 weeks (birthing) and 16 weeks (non-birthing)

• Lifestyle Spending Account: $600 USD annually

• Remote & Hybrid Work Support: one-time $550 USD home office setup stipend + monthly internet reimbursement

• Mental Health & Well-being: dedicated mental health resources and company-wide wellness programs

• International Travel: opportunities to travel to Chicago HQ for team meetups

• Kraków Office Perks: daily 50 zł lunch stipend when working from the office

• Salary range transparency: current hiring range 29,500 PLN–36,800 PLN net monthly; full base pay range 29,500 PLN–44,200 PLN monthly