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About the Role
Squarespace is looking for a Backend Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical direction of our Communications Platform team. The Communications Platform is a critical engine powering customer engagement across Squarespace — providing internal teams with a scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure for delivering communications via email, push notifications and in-product messaging.
The team owns multiple interconnected production platforms that collectively send over 1.75+ million notifications per day, strategic initiatives including platform modernization, In-Product Placements, and multi-channel communication capabilities.
In this role, you’ll serve as the senior technical voice for the team — driving architecture, shaping roadmap execution, and elevating the engineering quality of a small but high-impact team. This is a hands-on role with real technical depth, paired with broad cross-functional influence.
This is a hybrid role based in our NYC office (3 days per week), reporting to the Engineering Manager of Communications Platform.
Technologies You'll Work With
- Java, Spring, Kafka, MongoDB, CockroachDB, Kubernetes, GCP.
- The team actively uses Claude Code, Cursor and GitHub Copilot to accelerate development and code review.
Key Technical Responsibilities
- check_circle Drive the architecture, design, and implementation of the Communications Platform’s platforms — including Email Delivery, In-Product Notifications and Push Notifications.
- check_circle Define and own the technical strategy for platform modernization, reliability hardening, and engineering standards across backend services.
- check_circle Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to a team of backend and frontend engineers, helping them grow in system design, decision-making, and ownership.
- check_circle Write high-quality Java code and stay close to execution — leading design reviews, code reviews, and architectural decisions that raise the bar across the codebase.
- check_circle Proactively identify and address systemic risks in performance, reliability, security, and operability before they become incidents.
- check_circle Serve as a key technical partner on cross-team and company-wide architecture initiatives.
- check_circle Balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health, communicating tradeoffs clearly to stakeholders and leadership.
Prerequisites & Qualifications
- check 10+ years of backend engineering experience, with significant time building and operating large-scale, customer-facing systems.
- check Deep expertise in Java and backend service development, including APIs, async processing, messaging systems (ex: Kafka), and data stores (ex: MongoDB, CockroachDB).
- check Strong experience with distributed systems in production — including reliability, scaling, failure modes, and observability.
- check A proven track record of technical leadership at the Staff or Senior-plus level, influencing architecture across multiple teams or services.
- check Experience evolving existing systems — modernizing legacy platforms, simplifying complexity, and strengthening reliability without unnecessary rewrites.
- check Experience operating within platform engineering contexts, where your customers are internal or external product teams and the quality of your APIs and abstractions directly shapes their velocity.
- check A strong understanding of multi-channel communication infrastructure (email delivery, push, in-product notifications) is a meaningful plus.
- check The ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical partners.
- check A mindset oriented toward mentorship, collaboration, and inclusive technical leadership.
About Squarespace Greenhouse Board
Verified hiring organization details.
Squarespace Greenhouse Board refers to the centralized recruitment and talent acquisition infrastructure utilized by Squarespace, a New York City-based technology company specializing in website building and hosting platforms. The board serves as the primary interface for managing the company's global hiring pipeline, candidate tracking, and talent operations, facilitating the recruitment of engineering, product, and design talent to support the company's integrated suite of web publishing tools and e-commerce solutions.