🛠️ Staff Platform Engineer (Full-Stack)

Job description

PARTIFUL'S MISSION IS TO CULTIVATE FRIENDSHIPS THROUGH SOCIAL EVENTS. We believe events are the most effective way to meet new people and make friends. Our product helps you throw incredible events, starting with memorable party pages that make it easy to plan & communicate with guests — download the app http://partiful.com/download to see how it works! We're building new ways to streamline planning, connect meaningfully in the real world, and make connections between friends-of-friends. Our ultimate vision is to power everything you do in-person with your friends, eliminating the friction of bringing your most memorable experiences to life. You can read more about our mission in The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/31/partiful-gen-z-new-years-eve/, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/style/partiful-event-planning-parties.html, The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/evites-are-out-this-new-text-message-party-planner-is-in-46e8b64f, The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/party-invitation-website-partiful/672333/, Wirecutter https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/partiful-app-review/, and USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2024/08/04/partiful-app-party-planning/72619936007/?taid=66af5128983783000189ad12&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter. Partiful was named Google’s Best App of 2024 https://blog.google/products/google-play/google-play-best-apps-games-2024/, a Finalist for Apple’s App Store Awards https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/11/apple-reveals-45-app-and-game-finalists-for-the-2024-app-store-awards/, and Apple’s App of the Day https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1771691398 (awarded 4x). In 2025, we were named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential Companies https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289589/partiful/, one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies https://www.fastcompany.com/91270177/social-media-most-innovative-companies-2025-duolingo-bluesky-boston-celtics-pinterest-partiful-planoly-sesame-workshop-feeld-strava-yelp, and named to Inc. Magazine's Best in Business List https://www.inc.com/john-jannuzzi/how-partiful-became-the-life-of-gen-zs-irl-party/91263552. Our company is backed by top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures, and advised by the founders of some of the most successful consumer social products ever made. THE ROLE We’re looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to lead and scale the systems that power our product and engineering team. You’ll be the architect and driving force behind the reliability, scalability, and velocity of our platform — designing the infrastructure that powers products used by millions of users, and defining how our company builds and ships software at scale. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role in an environment where we move quickly, set ambitious goals, and hold a high bar for speed and technical excellence. You’ll drive long-term architectural decisions, lead high-leverage initiatives across teams, and set the technical standards for how we operate as we scale rapidly. You’ll also play a key role in enabling engineers across the company to move faster while maintaining reliability and code quality. Our stack is React (web app), React Native (mobile app), Node.js, and Typescript, running on GCP with a serverless architecture (Firestore, Redis, Cloud Run). WHAT YOU’LL DO - Architect and evolve our cloud infrastructure across GCP’s serverless ecosystem (Cloud Run, Firestore, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, etc.) to support rapid growth in users and product use cases - Design fault-tolerant, high-throughput systems and ensure observability and performance are first-class citizens - Lead cross-functional initiatives that improve developer velocity, system performance, and scalability - Develop and oversee the CI/CD, release, and testing infrastructure that supports dozens of deployments per day and weekly app releases with confidence - Own company-wide reliability and performance metrics (uptime, latency, cost efficiency) - Partner with leadership to align infrastructure investments with company and product strategy - Drive organization-wide enablement through AI — establishing tooling, workflows, and best practices that make engineers across the company dramatically faster and more effective - Mentor and coach engineers at all levels — raising the technical bar across the organization - Champion a culture of speed, reliability, and operational excellence WHAT YOU’LL BRING - 7–12+ years of infrastructure or backend engineering experience with a track record of driving high-impact, technically complex initiatives - Deep expertise in cloud architecture systems, with a strong command of system design, distributed systems, reliability engineering, and observability best practices - Demonstrated success scaling systems from millions to tens of millions of users - Mastery in building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, developer environments, and operational tooling - Strong coding ability in Node.js/TypeScript and deep comfort debugging complex production systems - History of accelerating engineering velocity through thoughtful infrastructure design and automation - Fluency with AI tools and development workflows — you actively use AI to move faster and enable others to do the same - Deep sense of ownership, urgency, and accountability — you thrive in a fast, high-intensity environment - Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence cross-team architecture and technical culture WHAT WE OFFER - 401(k) with up to 6% matching - Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance for you and all your dependents (FSAs and HSA plans available) - Free OneMedical membership, telehealth, and virtual mental health services - Commuter benefits & contributions towards ClassPass and Citibike memberships - Take what you need paid time off - 14 paid holidays throughout the calendar year - Quarterly stipend to plan your own party and dogfood the product - Semiannual team off-sites - Get invited to exclusive parties 🎉 In your application, please include a note on what excites you about Partiful! The anticipated annual salary for this position is $200k-$250k, plus a generous equity package. This range does not include any other compensation components or other benefits for which an individual may be eligible (other benefits listed above). The actual salary offered depends on a variety of factors, which may include as applicable, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, specific and unique skills, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and the location in which the applicant lives and/or from which they will be performing the job. We’re an equal-opportunity employer and strongly encourage applicants from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds to apply. We’re proud to be a diverse team and actively work to bring new perspectives to the table.