Senior Backend Engineer (Platform and API)

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer with experience in designing and implementing public APIs to join our fully remote and mission-driven team! Apply

Role details

Location: Remote Employment type: Full time Department: Engineering Compensation: $156.5K – $202.3K • Offers Equity We strive for Buffer’s approach to salary, equity, and benefits to be:

• Transparent
• Fair
• Simple
• Generous

Read more about our compensation philosophies and approach.

Role description

About Buffer

We create social media and brand-building software for small businesses, creators, and individuals. Our mission is to provide essential tools to help small businesses get off the ground and grow. Through exceptional customer service and uplifting content, we help our customers believe they can succeed and do good along the way. Buffer is a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently at Buffer. Since the early days, we’ve focused on building one of the most unique and fulfilling workplaces by rethinking a lot of traditional practices. We also default to transparency, so you can read all about our metrics, and our successes and failures along the way on our Transparency Dashboard. We're united by Buffer's values, and we hire and work from all over the world. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment, and we are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome and can flourish. Please note that we do travel to work together in person once or twice per year, and those events are highly encouraged to build deeper connections among our small team. As you get to know Buffer and consider joining the journey, feel free to read more from Kirsti and Sabreen as they share their first experiences with Buffer, as well as from Hailley, who captured why she still calls Buffer home after 8+ years.

About the role

We’re looking for a senior backend engineer to join the Channels and Platform team at Buffer. You will play a key role in building our public API and creating a future plug-in ecosystem that would elevate Buffer into a platform other developers can build on top of, providing creators the next generation of tools for writing, editing, and managing content. We’re looking for someone with first-hand experience designing, implementing, and maintaining public APIs and/or extensibility platforms, who enjoys going deep — designing data models, shaping APIs, improving performance, and helping our systems scale with clarity and confidence. You’ll work closely with product, design, and mobile + web engineers to bring ideas to life and keep the user experience smooth and resilient. We work iteratively and in tight feedback loops, balancing thoughtful engineering with steady momentum. In addition to building a new platform, you’ll help us strengthen our internal systems, making them faster, more scalable, and better equipped to power content creation at scale. There’s real room here to shape this direction and make an impact.

What you’ll do

• Be part of a small,

dedicated squad within the Channels and Platform team responsible for Public API development.

• Lead the development of the backend systems for the Buffer Platform.

This includes creating an API for core Buffer features, internal services to ensure Public API stability, availability, high performance, and developer tools for platform clients.

• Improve

evolve our internal systems — helping consolidate services into a monorepo, improve tooling e observability, and reduce complexity across the board.

• Collaborate closely with engineers,

product, and design to scope work, explore trade-offs, and find the simplest path to something great.

• Make steady improvements

to performance, reliability, and data modeling, helping us scale quality over time.

• Participate in on-call rotation (all engineers take on a 24/7 week-long shift once a quarter on average)and day-to-day maintenance work required to keep lights on systems owned by team (bug fixing,addressing security vulnerabilities,...)
• Contribute shaping engineering culture by sharing knowledge,...

Helpful skills

eand experience

• You have practical experience designing,...
• You have deep experience with modern stack — we use Node.js TypeScript GraphQL MongoDB.
• You’ve led backend projects from start-to-finish — shaping architecture guiding trade-offs delivering reliable systems that support real-world product needs.
• You have strong systems thinking...
• You’ve worked across teams drive platform or infrastructure improvements...
• You’ve contributed collaborative or multi-user product features...
• You’re fluent modern AI tools...
• You care about performance scale clean abstractions...
• You’ve influenced engineering culture through code reviews mentoring or leading by example...
• You have personal stake world content creation; maybe you’ve run newsletter built audience social media regularly shared own work online used Buffer before care about experience planning creating publishing content.
• You thrive remote async environments clear thinking generous context don’t wait perfect information get started.
• You’ve likely been doing this 7+ years but experience depth impact matter more than specific number.

Our tech stack

• NodeJS TypeScript MongoDB; part core legacy systems written PHP (including old APIs)
• Migrating GraphQL; use Apollo Client web application
• Services AWS Kubernetes; microservices architecture moving services central shared monorepo
• Frontend React TypeScript web frontends
• Internal design system Popcorn built Radix primitives CSS modules Storybook own system design tokens
• Automated tests jest react testing library (integration tests) Playwright (e2e tests)

Interview process

1. Application: submit application resume tell why want join Buffer take time chance make strong first impression

• Note: several engineering roles open recommend applying only one role choose one resonates most if during review interviews think you'd be great different position re-route application internally

2.... 3.... 4.... 5....