Staff Backend Engineer, Product

Summary

Join Zora, a revolutionary on-chain social network, as a Staff Back-end Engineer. You will be part of a core product engineering team responsible for developing our protocol, API, and web and mobile applications. Your work will directly impact millions of users. Lead large-scale projects, build and maintain APIs, and act as a technical leader, mentoring other engineers and contributing to code reviews. Ensure engineering excellence in maintainability and performance. Coordinate incident response for critical services. This role requires 8+ years of engineering experience, including 2+ years as a tech lead, a strong technical background in building scalable APIs, and exceptional communication skills. The ideal candidate will have experience with blockchains, Python, GraphQL, and MongoDB.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience as an engineer, ideally 2+ as a tech lead
• Strong technical background building APIs at scale (and ideally applications as well)
• Proven track record of working effectively with cross-functional partners like product, design, and marketing
• Exceptional communication and prioritization skills
• Experience setting the hiring bar and shaping interview processes for engineering teams
• Ability to design and implement performant, durable systems that make smart tradeoffs between product needs and technical constraints
• Demonstrated success in delivering products consistently to external users
• EU or U.S. (ET) time zone

Responsibilities

• Drive engineering excellence in maintainability, performance, and attention to detail, balancing pragmatism and polish
• Lead larger-scale projects to build out major new features in the product
• Build and maintain an API used by the product as well as external partners
• Act as a standard-bearer across the team through technical leadership: writing well-reasoned technical RFCs, contributing to RFC and code reviews, pair programming, mentoring other engineers, sharing knowledge through talks and demos
• Coordinate incident response for critical services, ensuring rapid recovery and systematic fixes to address root causes

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience building on top of blockchains
• Deep technical expertise in Python, GraphQL, and MongoDB
• Comfort moving across the stack when needed (TypeScript/React/Next and Solidity)
• Experience operating within high-ambiguity startup environments
• Strong product intuition and a keen eye for design

Benefits

• ZORA provides top quality medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible time-off policy
• A new Macbook Pro for full-time employees
• Employees also receive equity