Senior Software Engineer - Web API Platform

Overview

Scribd, Inc. is on a mission to advance human understanding. Our four products — Scribd®, Slideshare®, Everand™, and Fable — help billions of people across the globe move beyond access and into insight, application, and expertise.

Culture at Scribd, Inc. We support a culture where our employees can be real and be bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer. We balance individual flexibility with meaningful community connection. Scribd Flex empowers employees to choose the workstyle and location that support their best performance, while committing to intentional in-person moments that strengthen collaboration and culture.

Occasional in-person attendance is required for all Scribd, Inc. employees, regardless of location.

We hire for “GRIT.” Traditionally defined as the intersection of passion and perseverance toward long-term goals, GRIT reflects the mindset we expect from every employee. It also serves as a practical framework for how we work: setting and achieving Goals, delivering Results within your role, contributing Innovative ideas and solutions, and strengthening the broader Team through collaboration and attitude.

This posting reflects an approved, open position within the organization.

The Web Platform team is part of our Developer Platform organization and supports our broader Web Modernization efforts across the company. Our mission is to help product teams move faster by providing a scalable, well-designed API foundation that supports modern web architectures. We work across the organization to reduce coupling, improve developer experience, and establish durable integration patterns between frontend experiences and backend systems.

We operate with high autonomy and a long-term mandate. The platform we build will shape how teams develop, ship, and evolve our web products over time.

We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Web API Platform to help establish a company-wide API platform that accelerates web modernization at Scribd.

In this role, you will design, build, and own new product-facing web APIs that span our full web product surface across Scribd and Everand. These APIs will serve as the primary interface between modern web applications and existing backend systems, enabling teams to evolve toward more scalable, maintainable frontend architectures with confidence.

Today, our web product relies on fragmented data access patterns and lacks standardized APIs and tooling. This role offers the opportunity to design APIs intentionally with a focus on clear contracts, predictable performance, and strong observability, improving developer experience and enabling teams to ship faster and more safely.

This team will be the primary owner of product-facing web APIs. As the platform matures, the Web Platform team will design, implement, and maintain the majority of new web APIs, while providing a stable foundation that other teams can integrate with and extend when appropriate.

You will work closely with frontend and backend teams to define integration patterns, guide API usage, and ensure the platform scales with real-world data volumes and access patterns.

• Strong ownership mindset, owning API design and implementation from initial design through production, iteration, and long-term maintenance.
• Pragmatic approach to system design, balancing ideal architecture with real-world constraints
• Ability to design performance-aware APIs with intentional constraints that scale safely
• Strong collaborator who works with frontend & backend teams toward better performance and integration outcomes
• Long-term perspective on maintainability, extensibility, and developer experience

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong backend or platform focus
• Proven experience designing APIs for high-volume or data-intensive product workflows
• Experience implementing and integrating APIs with a Ruby on Rails application
• Familiarity with modern API paradigms (e.g., REST, Graph
  
  QL, gRPC), including their performance and…