Software Engineer, API Platform

Overview

Convex is transforming the way developers build applications. Our mission is to fundamentally change how software is built on the Internet by empowering developers to create fast, reliable, and dynamic apps without a backend team. We provide a full‑stack app platform carefully designed with database, compute, and backend abstractions that allow developers and LLMs to move fast while creating products that scale and remain simple over their lifetime.

Convex has assembled a team of engineers who have built and designed some of the largest backends in the world, with exabytes of data, millions of transactions per second, and shipped desktop and mobile software onto billions of devices. We are a group of friendly, collaborative, and passionate people that love working in‑person together in our office in San Francisco.

Convex is a backend platform but our key differentiator is an excellent client API and developer experience. We’ve invested huge efforts in our client libraries, development APIs, and sync protocol to make Convex a joy to use for application developers. We’re looking to expand our team to develop the next version of the Convex API and help define what the modern application stack looks like.

• Design, build, and maintain Convex’s client libraries, sync protocol, and query APIs.
• Support new frameworks and keep track of new technologies in the app development space.
• Develop an understanding of what abstractions scale and compose well in our stack so we can build libraries that are not just easy to use but also simple over the lifetime of a project.
• Be self‑directed to prioritize the right projects to work on, in close collaboration with the engineering team and CTO.
• Help establish good practices and design guidelines as we scale up our team and systems.
• Write a bunch of cool client library code.

• Multiple years experience building APIs, client libraries or developer tools.
• Good understanding of best practices in the Type Script, React, and web dev ecosystems.
• Experience or enthusiasm for scaling in a high growth startup environment.
• Interest to work in‑person at Convex’s office in SF.
• Ability to write high quality code (strong Type Script experience a plus).
• An enthusiasm for going deep to understand Convex systems and not be constrained to a certain layer of the stack.

Convex is a rejection of industry norms and a belief there’s a better way of building apps. Engineers here need to think deeply about why they’re solving problems and the long‑term implications of their choices. If someone does something just because they were told to or because it’s a "best practice" they will probably not excel here.

We generally weigh experience on OLTP databases over OLAP or offline systems. Not just because it’s more relevant domain experience but it also involves a mindset that the system absolutely must work because there’s a critical user‑facing application on the other side. Live‑site experience brings an appreciation of how hard it is to keep a service running at all times and how important it is to build simple well‑abstracted systems that are less likely to fail.

Simplicity is at the heart of all good systems, especially those that are able to scale and adapt to future needs. In addition to architectural simplicity, we also try to do the simplest thing to solve a given problem ’t come here because you want to write a consensus protocol or storage engine, even though sometimes we need to do these things.

Come here because you want to get really good at achieving great things in the simplest possible way.

Startups are hard. Building something from nothing is hard. Driving forward progress despite uncertainty is hard. We have a high bar for quality but also a high bar for being constructive, positive, and excited about making things better. We’re meant to be having fun here.

Working at Convex is rewarding and the workload isn’t crazy but our users come first and sometimes that means we need to be on‑call. We sometimes get paged at night and have to respond with dedication, sometimes need to dig deep to debug a tricky issue or solve a problem no one has solved before. There’s a camaraderie that comes from being in a team where everyone has tenacity, will step in to help each other out, and can be trusted to do the right thing.

Salary range for this full‑time position is $170,000 + equity + benefits.