Staff Software Engineer (Backend) - Fable Core

About Scribd, Inc.

Scribd, Inc. aims to advance human understanding by offering platforms like Scribd®, Slideshare®, Everand™, and Fable, which help billions globally move from mere access to meaningful insights, application, and expertise.

Culture and Work Style

We prioritize an environment where authenticity and courage are foundational. Our team thrives on open debate, commitment through challenges, and empowerment to prioritize customer needs. We balance individual flexibility with community connection through Scribd Flex, allowing employees to select optimal work styles and locations while maintaining regular in-person collaboration for stronger team culture. Occasional on-site presence is essential for all employees.

Role Overview

The Fable Core team manages the backend infrastructure and platform for Fable, a prominent social reading app with over 1 million monthly active users, celebrated frequently in App Store features. The role involves defining technical strategies for the backend, ensuring system reliability, collaborating closely with product, design, machine learning, and infrastructure teams, leading incident responses thoroughly, mentoring peers, and elevating overall engineering standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and communicate technical strategies and architecture designs for the Fable backend to translate ambiguous product visions into robust backend implementations.
• Manage platform health by overseeing reliability, staging environments, CI/CD processes, databases, message queues, cost control, and system observability.
• Take charge of incident management end-to-end, including executing post-incident reviews and ensuring actionable follow-ups.
• Serve as the Fable backend's key representative in cross-team planning and execution, facilitating coordination among stakeholders.
• Enhance team capabilities through comprehensive code reviews, mentoring, pair programming, and enforcing high standards for system design, testing, and operations.
• Continuously improve the backend platform to accelerate and secure the team's delivery processes.
• Integrate and promote agentic engineering methodologies and tools within day-to-day workflows.

Candidate Qualifications

• Over 10 years of professional experience in backend development, primarily with Python/Django and at least one other technology stack such as Go, Node.js, Java, or Kotlin.
• Hands-on experience operating production systems on major cloud providers, managing OLTP databases at scale, container orchestration, message queuing, and continuous integration/deployment.
• Proven success in owning software incidents from detection through resolution, including comprehensive postmortem follow-through.
• Strong ability to author clear Technical Design Documents that earn trust from senior staff engineers and are understandable to product leadership.
• Excellent cross-disciplinary communication skills, with a collaborative approach focused on overall system success rather than individual correctness.
• A practical mindset combined with strong systems intuition, emphasizing root cause analysis over superficial fixes.
• Experience using agentic engineering tools and processes effectively in real production environments.

Preferred Experience

• Knowledge of subscription and entitlement management systems such as Stripe, RevenueCat, and platform-specific billing APIs.
• Leadership experience in platform or infrastructure migrations including transitions to/from cloud providers or architectural shifts like monolith to microservices.
• Familiarity working alongside machine learning teams on recommendation engines or feed algorithms.

Compensation and Locations

Base salary ranges vary by geographic location within Canada, the United States, and Mexico, acknowledging local market benchmarks and individual qualifications. This position offers competitive equity ownership and a comprehensive benefits package.

Work Locations Eligible

Employees must reside near specific cities in the US, Canada, or Mexico where Scribd, Inc. operates, such as Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver for Canada, and multiple major US metro areas.

Benefits

• Flexible working model through Scribd Flex
• Inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance plans
• Mental health and disability support
• Generous paid time off including vacation, sick days, holidays, volunteer time, and sabbaticals
• Paid parental leave and family assistance
• Retirement contribution matching and employee equity opportunities
• Access to learning and professional development programs
• Wellness and home office stipends
• Free access to Scribd’s products and enterprise AI tool subscriptions

Diversity and Equal Opportunity

The company is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion, encouraging applicants from all backgrounds. Reasonable accommodations are available to support candidates throughout the hiring process.