Senior Backend Engineer (Product) at Buffer

Senior Backend Engineer – Content Team

About Buffer

At Buffer, we make 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.

We’re a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently at Buffer. Since the early days, we’ve had a focus 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 hire and work from all over the world. 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.

We're united by Buffer's values, and we celebrate our unique differences. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment and are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome, and can flourish.

About the Role

We’re looking for a senior backend engineer to join the Content team at Buffer. You’ll take the lead on building and evolving the systems behind how creators write, edit, and manage content — including AI-powered features, real-time collaboration, recommendation engine and the backend infrastructure that supports a fast, flexible, and reliable content creation experience.

We’re looking for someone 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 frontend engineers to bring ideas to life and keep the editing experience smooth and resilient.

We work iteratively and in tight feedback loops, balancing thoughtful engineering with steady momentum. You’ll help us strengthen our internal platform, making it 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

• Lead the development of backend systems for our core content creation tools, including APIs, offline data pipelines, and AI-powered workflows.
• Improve and evolve our internal platform — consolidate services into a monorepo, improve tooling and observability, and reduce complexity.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, and design teams to explore trade-offs and deliver high-impact work.
• Enhance performance, reliability, and data modeling for scalable, quality-first systems.
• Take shared ownership of system health — participate in our on-call rotation and contribute to ongoing maintenance work.
• Contribute to engineering culture through code reviews, mentorship, and knowledge sharing.

Helpful Skills and Experience

• Deep experience with Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, and MongoDB.
• Led backend projects end-to-end, with experience in architecture, trade-offs, and real-world reliability.
• Comfortable with API design, data modeling, and full-stack performance and reliability.
• Experience with both online and offline systems and large-scale data architecture.
• Strong systems thinking with a focus on scalable and maintainable infrastructure.
• Past contributions to platform-level improvements across teams and services.
• Experience building collaborative/multi-user product features with consistency and UX in mind.
• Proficiency with AI tools, both in development and workflow optimization.
• Focus on clean abstractions, scale, and performance measurement.
• Experience mentoring, leading by example, and driving engineering culture.
• Personal stake in content creation — such as publishing online or using tools like Buffer.
• Thrives in remote, async environments with clear communication and autonomy.
• 7+ years of experience (or equivalent depth and impact).

Our Tech Stack

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Apollo Client, CSS Modules, Storybook
• Design System: Internal system called Popcorn using Radix, design tokens
• Testing: Jest, React Testing Library, Playwright
• Backend: Node.js, TypeScript, MongoDB
• Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Microservices moving to monorepo

Interview Process

1. Application: Submit your resume and tell us why you want to join Buffer.
2. Hiring Manager Interview: Introductory call to assess alignment and fit.
3. Async Assignment: A short 30-minute task to simulate team collaboration.
4. Technical Interviews: 1–2 interviews focused on system design and engineering craft. No whiteboard or trick questions.
5. Collaboration Period: Paid real-world project over several days (about 10 hours total).
6. Final Interview: Meet with our CEO, Joel Gascoigne, to gain deeper insight into Buffer’s mission and values.
7. Offer: Final details and welcome to the team! 💛

At Buffer, we value diversity of experience and actively seek to add new perspectives to our team. If your background doesn’t perfectly match the description but you’re excited about this role, we’d love to hear from you.

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