Backend Software Engineer (Product API)

**About The Company** Philo is revolutionizing the television experience by creating a platform that allows users to watch their favorite shows seamlessly across multiple devices. With a focus on user-centric design, Philo offers features such as smooth playback, personalized content discovery, and effortless sharing capabilities. The company is driven by a mission to connect viewers with compelling content while prioritizing innovation and accessibility. At its core, Philo values its people—both its subscribers and its team members. The organization fosters an environment that encourages collaboration, transparency, and openness. Employees are empowered to excel in their roles through support and shared goals, fostering a culture of pragmatism, pride, and passion. Diversity and inclusion are integral to Philo’s growth strategy, recognizing that diverse perspectives accelerate innovation and enhance the quality of the user experience. The company's product ecosystem is built around delivering personalized, high-quality video content. The Product API team plays a pivotal role in this mission by powering nearly every non-media interaction within the application, facilitating a tailored experience for millions of users on web, mobile, and connected TV platforms. **About The Role** Philo is seeking an enthusiastic and experienced Backend Engineer to join its dynamic team. This role involves designing, developing, and maintaining scalable APIs and platform infrastructure that support the company's innovative video streaming services. The successful candidate will contribute to shaping the technical vision and roadmap for the Product API, ensuring high reliability, performance, and scalability across all endpoints. Key responsibilities include collaborating with cross-functional teams to develop GraphQL APIs that deliver rich user experiences, owning critical subsystems such as recommendations, search, notifications, and user preferences, and building integration layers that unify various backend services. The engineer will also focus on enhancing system observability, optimizing database queries, and implementing caching strategies to support the company's growing user base. Additionally, the role involves working closely with data science and product teams to enable experimentation, A/B testing, and data-driven decision-making. This position offers an exciting opportunity to influence the core architecture of Philo’s platform, improve system robustness, and contribute to a product used by millions. The ideal candidate will be a proactive problem-solver with a deep understanding of API design principles, cloud deployment, and backend development best practices. **Qualifications** - 8+ years of software development experience - 2+ years of experience mentoring or providing technical guidance to engineering teams - Proven expertise in designing and implementing GraphQL APIs at scale - Strong experience with backend services using NodeJS, Ruby, Golang, Python, or similar languages - Hands-on experience operating in cloud environments such as AWS, Docker, Kubernetes - Deep understanding of API design, caching strategies, and performance tuning - Experience working with relational and non-relational databases and data warehousing - Strong systems thinking and ability to design cohesive API abstractions - Experience building proxy and aggregation layers for backend service integration - Familiarity with experimentation frameworks, feature flags, and A/B testing infrastructure - Excellent collaboration and communication skills across cross-functional teams - Understanding of video streaming ecosystems and multi-platform API challenges **Responsibilities** - Provide technical leadership and mentorship within the Product API team, guiding architecture and design decisions - Collaborate with product and client engineering teams to develop high-performance GraphQL APIs that enhance user experiences - Own and evolve core subsystems such as recommendations, search, notifications, and user preferences - Build and maintain integration layers that unify backend services into cohesive APIs - Drive continuous improvements in API reliability, scalability, and maintainability, ensuring sub-second response times - Instrument APIs for experimentation, analytics, and feature rollout, supporting data-driven development - Develop observability tools for monitoring system performance, debugging issues, and optimizing cache utilization - Work with infrastructure teams to optimize database queries and implement caching strategies for scalability - Design and implement proxy layers that aggregate multiple backend services, ensuring seamless integration - Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to align technical solutions with product goals and user needs **Benefits** - Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families - 401(k) plan with employer matching contributions (100% match up to 3%, and 50% of the next 2%) - Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave to support work-life balance - Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave, promoting flexibility and well-being - Annual vacation bonus of $2,000 to encourage taking time off - Annual professional development and educational assistance of $5,250 - Home office setup stipend of $1,250 in the first year, with ongoing annual stipends - Bonus of $500/month (up to $6,000/year) for employees working at least three days per week in the office, plus commuter benefits - Free Gympass subscription providing access to a wide network of gyms, studios, and wellness programs Equal Opportunity We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law.