Senior Software Engineer, Web API Platform

Senior Software Engineer, Web API Platform

About The Company

At Scribd Inc. (pronounced “scribbed”), our mission is to spark human curiosity. Join our team as we create a world of stories and knowledge, democratize the exchange of ideas and information, and empower collective expertise through our four products:
Everand, Scribd, Slideshare, and Fable.

We support a culture where our employees can be real and bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer. Scribd Flex provides flexibility in daily work styles, with occasional in-person attendance required for all employees to foster collaboration, culture, and connection.

At Scribd, we hire for GRIT — Goals, Results, Innovation, and Team collaboration. You will be expected to pursue a GRIT-oriented approach to your work.

About The Team

The Web Platform team is part of our Developer Platform organization and supports our Web Modernization efforts. We build a scalable, well‑designed API foundation to reduce coupling, improve developer experience, and establish durable integration patterns between frontend and backend systems. The team operates with high autonomy and a long-term mandate.

About The Role

We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Web API Platform to help establish a company-wide API platform that accelerates web modernization  will design, build, and own new product-facing web APIs that span our full web product surface across Scribd and Everand. These APIs will serve as the primary interface between modern web applications and existing backend systems, enabling teams to evolve toward more scalable, maintainable frontend architectures with confidence.

Responsibilities include designing APIs with clear contracts, predictable performance, and strong observability; collaborating with frontend and backend teams to define integration patterns; and ensuring the platform scales with real-world data volumes and access patterns. You will be the primary owner of product-facing web APIs, with the Web Platform team maturing to design, implement, and maintain the majority of new web APIs while providing a stable foundation for other teams to integrate with.

You will work closely with frontend and backend teams to define integration patterns, guide API usage, and ensure the platform scales with real-world data volumes and access patterns.

What You’ll Bring

Key Attributes

• Strong ownership mindset, owning API design and implementation from initial design through production, iteration, and long-term maintenance.
• Pragmatic approach to system design, balancing ideal architecture with real-world constraints.
• Ability to design performance-aware APIs with intentional constraints that scale safely.
• Strong collaborator who works with frontend & backend teams toward better performance and integration outcomes.
• Long-term perspective on maintainability, extensibility, and developer experience.

Experience We Value

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong backend or platform focus.
• Proven experience designing APIs for high-volume or data-intensive product workflows.
• Experience implementing and integrating APIs with a Ruby on Rails application.
• Familiarity with modern API paradigms (REST, Graph
  
  QL, gRPC), including performance and operational tradeoffs.
• Experience with query patterns, caching, pagination, and common performance pitfalls.
• Experience designing APIs with explicit contracts, versioning, and testing strategies.
• Experience working with modern web frontends (e.g., React, Next.js, or similar).
• Strong communication skills and experience championing API design across teams.
• Hands-on experience incorporating AI-assisted tools into development workflows (e.g., debugging, testing, documentation, or design exploration).

What Sets You Apart

• You’ve designed APIs where performance characteristics were explicit and intentional, not accidental.
• You consider observability, failure modes, and system health as part of API design, not afterthoughts.
• You’re comfortable placing thoughtful constraints on API consumers to protect scalability and developer experience.
• You treat…