{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"ccf2070dd06cb532a22f148a","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/ccf2070dd06cb532a22f148a","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/ccf2070dd06cb532a22f148a","title":"Lead Backend Software Engineer (Product API)","description":"San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA or remote\r\nAbout Philo\r\nPhilo is building the future of television. Our product lets you watch your favorite shows on all the devices you care about, with seamless playback, insightful discovery, and effortless sharing. In short, we're building the TV experience that we've always wanted for ourselves.\r\nWe're a company that puts people first — both our subscribers and our team. At Philo, our philosophy is to empower our colleagues to do their best work while supporting each other in pursuing shared goals. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion. We believe in having transparency and openness across all parts of the company.\r\nWe are committed to diversity and inclusion as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV. We believe that a diverse set of voices and perspectives on our team enables us to innovate faster and create the best experience for our subscribers.\r\nPhilo aims to connect customers with their favorite shows, help them discover new favorites, and get them seamlessly into the video player watching their next shows. The Product API team is central to this mission and powers virtually every non-media interaction in our application delivering a personalized experience for millions of users across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms.\r\nWe are seeking an enthusiastic, experienced backend engineer with a deep technical background building scalable APIs, services, and platform infrastructure. You will contribute to the technical vision and roadmap for Product API, drive architecture and reliability with strong observability, coordinate cross-team delivery to unblock new user experiences, and ensure partner integrations land smoothly.\r\nResponsibilities\r\nProvide technical leadership to members of the Product API team, including input on system architecture and design tradeoffs, as well as coaching other members of the team and mentoring new hires.\r\nCollaborate with product and client engineering teams to design and deliver GraphQL APIs that enable rich, performant user experiences while maintaining clean separation of concerns and optimal client-server interactions.\r\nOwn and evolve critical product subsystems including recommendations, catalog, search, in-app notifications, user preferences, viewing history, collections, experiments, and feature flags.\r\nBuild and maintain proxy and augmentation layers that integrate domain services from across the organization (such as video infrastructure, recommendations systems, and search) into a cohesive, unified API.\r\nDrive continuous improvements to the reliability, performance, scalability, and maintainability of Philo's product API infrastructure, ensuring sub-second response times and high availability across all endpoints.\r\nCollaborate with data science and product analytics teams to instrument the API layer for experimentation, A/B testing, and feature rollouts, enabling data-driven product decisions.\r\nBuild and enhance observability tools to proactively monitor API performance, identify bottlenecks, debug issues, and ensure optimal cache utilization across the system.\r\nWork with infrastructure teams to optimize database queries, implement effective caching strategies, and ensure DataServer scales efficiently as Philo's user base grows.\r\nQualifications\r\n8+ years of software development experience.\r\n2+ years of experience mentoring and providing technical guidance to other engineers (bonus points for experience or interest in managing engineering teams).\r\nStrong experience designing and implementing GraphQL APIs at scale (bonus points for experience with complex schema design, query optimization, and federation patterns).\r\nProven track record of building highly efficient and highly available backend services using NodeJS, Ruby, Golang, Python, or similar programming languages.\r\nExperience operating in cloud computing environments using modern software deployment technologies (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, AWS).\r\nDeep understanding of API design principles, RESTful and GraphQL patterns, caching strategies, and performance optimization techniques.\r\nExperience working with large amounts of data and making data-based decisions to prioritize projects, including familiarity with relational and non-relational databases and modern data warehousing and querying with SQL.\r\nStrong systems thinking with the ability to design cohesive API abstractions that cleanly separate concerns while enabling flexibility for diverse client needs.\r\nExperience building proxy and aggregation layers that integrate multiple backend services into unified APIs.\r\nFamiliarity with experimentation frameworks, feature flag systems, and A/B testing infrastructure.\r\nExperience and aptitude for collaborating and communicating with internal stakeholders across product, design, client platform engineering, and data science teams.\r\nUnderstanding of video streaming product ecosystems and the unique challenges of building APIs for multi-platform applications (web, mobile, TV).\r\nExpertise in either product-facing API development or machine learning systems and model serving infrastructure.\r\nBenefits\r\nFull health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family\r\n401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)\r\nUp to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave\r\nUnlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave\r\n$2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)\r\n$5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance\r\n$1,250 annual home office + TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)\r\n$500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)\r\nFree Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps\r\nLocation & Status\r\nProjected Start Date: ASAP\r\nStatus: Full-time\r\nLocation: San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA, or remote\r\nCompensation\r\nDenver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Chicago: $189K - $215K\r\nTexas, Florida: $170K - $205K\r\nPhilo is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We're committed to supporting every candidate and employee. If you need an accommodation at any stage of the process, please email recruiting@philo.com and we'll work with you to meet your needs.\r\nJ-18808-Ljbffr","company":"Philo","rawCompany":"philo","city":"Millbrae","state":"CA","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-04-09T15:27:42.277Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"},{"code":"15-1254.00","title":"Web Developers","slug":"web-developers"}],"industries":[{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Lead Backend Software Engineer (Product API)","description":"San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA or remote\r\nAbout Philo\r\nPhilo is building the future of television. Our product lets you watch your favorite shows on all the devices you care about, with seamless playback, insightful discovery, and effortless sharing. In short, we're building the TV experience that we've always wanted for ourselves.\r\nWe're a company that puts people first — both our subscribers and our team. At Philo, our philosophy is to empower our colleagues to do their best work while supporting each other in pursuing shared goals. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion. We believe in having transparency and openness across all parts of the company.\r\nWe are committed to diversity and inclusion as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV. We believe that a diverse set of voices and perspectives on our team enables us to innovate faster and create the best experience for our subscribers.\r\nPhilo aims to connect customers with their favorite shows, help them discover new favorites, and get them seamlessly into the video player watching their next shows. The Product API team is central to this mission and powers virtually every non-media interaction in our application delivering a personalized experience for millions of users across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms.\r\nWe are seeking an enthusiastic, experienced backend engineer with a deep technical background building scalable APIs, services, and platform infrastructure. You will contribute to the technical vision and roadmap for Product API, drive architecture and reliability with strong observability, coordinate cross-team delivery to unblock new user experiences, and ensure partner integrations land smoothly.\r\nResponsibilities\r\nProvide technical leadership to members of the Product API team, including input on system architecture and design tradeoffs, as well as coaching other members of the team and mentoring new hires.\r\nCollaborate with product and client engineering teams to design and deliver GraphQL APIs that enable rich, performant user experiences while maintaining clean separation of concerns and optimal client-server interactions.\r\nOwn and evolve critical product subsystems including recommendations, catalog, search, in-app notifications, user preferences, viewing history, collections, experiments, and feature flags.\r\nBuild and maintain proxy and augmentation layers that integrate domain services from across the organization (such as video infrastructure, recommendations systems, and search) into a cohesive, unified API.\r\nDrive continuous improvements to the reliability, performance, scalability, and maintainability of Philo's product API infrastructure, ensuring sub-second response times and high availability across all endpoints.\r\nCollaborate with data science and product analytics teams to instrument the API layer for experimentation, A/B testing, and feature rollouts, enabling data-driven product decisions.\r\nBuild and enhance observability tools to proactively monitor API performance, identify bottlenecks, debug issues, and ensure optimal cache utilization across the system.\r\nWork with infrastructure teams to optimize database queries, implement effective caching strategies, and ensure DataServer scales efficiently as Philo's user base grows.\r\nQualifications\r\n8+ years of software development experience.\r\n2+ years of experience mentoring and providing technical guidance to other engineers (bonus points for experience or interest in managing engineering teams).\r\nStrong experience designing and implementing GraphQL APIs at scale (bonus points for experience with complex schema design, query optimization, and federation patterns).\r\nProven track record of building highly efficient and highly available backend services using NodeJS, Ruby, Golang, Python, or similar programming languages.\r\nExperience operating in cloud computing environments using modern software deployment technologies (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, AWS).\r\nDeep understanding of API design principles, RESTful and GraphQL patterns, caching strategies, and performance optimization techniques.\r\nExperience working with large amounts of data and making data-based decisions to prioritize projects, including familiarity with relational and non-relational databases and modern data warehousing and querying with SQL.\r\nStrong systems thinking with the ability to design cohesive API abstractions that cleanly separate concerns while enabling flexibility for diverse client needs.\r\nExperience building proxy and aggregation layers that integrate multiple backend services into unified APIs.\r\nFamiliarity with experimentation frameworks, feature flag systems, and A/B testing infrastructure.\r\nExperience and aptitude for collaborating and communicating with internal stakeholders across product, design, client platform engineering, and data science teams.\r\nUnderstanding of video streaming product ecosystems and the unique challenges of building APIs for multi-platform applications (web, mobile, TV).\r\nExpertise in either product-facing API development or machine learning systems and model serving infrastructure.\r\nBenefits\r\nFull health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family\r\n401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)\r\nUp to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave\r\nUnlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave\r\n$2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)\r\n$5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance\r\n$1,250 annual home office + TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)\r\n$500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)\r\nFree Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps\r\nLocation & Status\r\nProjected Start Date: ASAP\r\nStatus: Full-time\r\nLocation: San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA, or remote\r\nCompensation\r\nDenver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Chicago: $189K - $215K\r\nTexas, Florida: $170K - $205K\r\nPhilo is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We're committed to supporting every candidate and employee. If you need an accommodation at any stage of the process, please email recruiting@philo.com and we'll work with you to meet your needs.\r\nJ-18808-Ljbffr","datePosted":"2026-04-09T15:27:42.277Z","dateModified":"2026-04-09T15:27:42.277Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Philo","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Millbrae","addressRegion":"CA","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"ccf2070dd06cb532a22f148a"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/ccf2070dd06cb532a22f148a"}}