Software Engineer, Backend, Level 4

Location: Bellevue, India | Los Angeles, Canada | New York, United States | Palo Alto, Canada | San Francisco, Canada | Seattle, India

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Full time

About Snap Inc

Snap Inc is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

About the Role

Snap Inc is a camera company that believes the camera represents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. We empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together through our core products: Snapchat, a visual messaging app; Lens Studio, an AR platform; and Spectacles, our AR glasses. Snap Engineering teams build fun, technically sophisticated products reaching hundreds of millions of Snapchatters daily. We're committed to a creative culture rooted in our values: moving fast with precision, always prioritizing privacy, and fostering well-being for our global community. Join us as a Software Engineer, Backend, Level 4, in Engineering, to power the backend services that make AR innovations and camera magic possible. In this role, you'll design, implement, and operate our most critical scalable services—from user identity and friend graphs to the core persistence layer that supports Snapchat's real-time visual experiences. You'll collaborate across teams to translate product requirements into robust solutions, evaluating trade-offs to deliver features that enhance AR Lenses, Spectacles integration, and seamless messaging. Striving for high quality, you'll test, debug, and optimize systems for massive scale, while advocating best practices in availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost efficiency. Your work will directly impact how Snapchatters capture and share moments through innovative camera and AR technologies. We're seeking engineers with a proven track record in backend services and distributed systems, capable of independently shipping medium-sized features over weeks with multiple PRs. You'll bring operational savvy for incident response and a collaborative spirit to thrive in our fast-paced, creative environment. With experience in large-scale microservices, cloud infrastructure, or related areas, you'll help scale services that handle billions of daily interactions. Snap's 'Default Together' policy emphasizes 4+ days in-office for dynamic collaboration, building our innovative culture faster. If you're passionate about AR, camera tech, and creating joyful products, apply to shape the future of visual communication at Snap.

What You'll Do

• Design, implement, and operate critical scalable services powering Snapchat's user identity, friend graph, and core persistence layer
• Build backend systems that enable innovative AR features in Snapchat and Lens Studio
• Work cross-functionally with product teams to understand requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver solutions for camera-driven experiences
• Ensure services support real-time interactions for hundreds of millions of Snapchatters worldwide
• Evaluate, test, and debug work to maintain high quality in high-scale environments
• Advocate for best practices in availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management
• Collaborate on AR innovations that enhance how people express themselves through the camera
• Participate in on-call rotations for incident response and system reliability
• Optimize backend infrastructure to handle massive data flows from Spectacles and Snapchat Lenses
• Drive privacy-forward engineering to protect user data in visual messaging
• Contribute to a creative culture by shipping features that let users live in the moment and have fun together

Minimum Qualifications

• 2+ years of post-Bachelor’s software development experience, or Master’s degree in a technical field + 1+ year of post-grad software development experience, or PhD in a relevant technical field
• Experience working with distributed systems
• Proven track record of operating highly-available systems at significant scale
• Ability to independently execute on medium-sized features, taking a few weeks and multiple PRs to complete
• Understanding of operational aspects of systems, including participation in incident or hotfix investigation and resolution
• Experience in at least one of: large-scale microservices and distributed systems, cloud computing and storage systems, infrastructure and large-scale system design, security, networking and data storage, or machine learning and natural language processing tools
• Ability to collaborate and work well with others

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Java, C++, and/or Python
• Experience with NoSQL solutions, Memcache/Redis, Kubernetes, or Google/AWS services
• Background in camera technology, AR systems, or real-time visual processing
• Experience scaling services for consumer-facing apps with hundreds of millions of users
• Familiarity with privacy-focused engineering practices

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Backend service development
• Distributed systems design
• Operating highly-available systems at scale
• Independent feature execution
• Incident investigation and resolution
• Cross-team collaboration
• Scalability and performance optimization
• Testing and debugging
• Operational excellence
• Cost management
• Microservices architecture
• Cloud computing (Google/AWS)
• NoSQL databases
• Caching systems (Memcache/Redis)
• Container orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Privacy engineering
• Real-time systems for AR/camera tech
• Problem-solving in fast-paced environments

Our Benefits

• Paid parental leave
• Comprehensive medical coverage
• Emotional and mental health support programs
• Compensation packages including equity in the form of RSUs
• Competitive base salary based on pay zones (Zone A: $157,000-$235,000; Zone B: $149,000-$223,000; Zone C: $133,000-$200,000)
• "Default Together" policy with dynamic in-office collaboration 4+ days per week
• Opportunities to work on cutting-edge AR and camera technologies
• Inclusive culture fostering diverse backgrounds and innovative product creation

Compensation

$157,000-$235,000 annually

This position is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs.

"Default Together" Policy: At Snap Inc, we practice a "default together" approach and expect team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.

Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.