Staff Software Engineer, Cloud Platform

Job Description

Arc XP (https://www.arcxp.com/) is a cloud-based digital experience platform that empowers enterprise companies, retail brands, and media and entertainment organizations to create and distribute content, drive digital commerce, and deliver compelling multichannel experiences. As a division of The Washington Post, Arc XP has facilitated the digital transformation of customers worldwide, currently serving over 1,900 sites in more than 25 countries, reaching nearly 2 billion unique visitors monthly.

Fully leveraging AWS, the Arc platform is built upon a microservices architecture. Our software teams embrace DevOps principles to deliver and maintain products efficiently. With lightweight processes, our teams innovate rapidly, bringing new ideas to market with agility. New features and products are deployed daily to our customer base, operating as Software as a Service by Arc.

We're actively seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Content Delivery engineering team. In this role, you'll lead the design, implementation, and scaling of core platform components that enable Arc's customers to create and deliver exceptional digital experiences. Your responsibilities will span backend applications, identity management systems, and AWS infrastructure, driving initiatives to modernize and enhance the platform's capabilities. Collaborating closely with product owners, architects, and engineering teams, you'll play a critical role in shaping a suite of world-class applications, providing innovative solutions for development practices, scalability, and deployment strategies. This role is pivotal, offering opportunities to influence technical direction and mentor team members across multiple teams.

Motivation

• You demonstrate a passion for technical excellence through innovative solutions and continuous learning.

• You excel in leadership, mentoring teams, and fostering an inclusive, collaborative environment.

• You thrive on solving complex problems and designing solutions that have a meaningful impact on customers and end-users.

• You are a strategic thinker who balances technical depth with business needs, ensuring long-term scalability and maintainability.

• You are committed to innovation and staying at the forefront of modern technologies and best practices.

Responsibilities

Technical Responsibilities:

• Building secure and highly-scalable backend services to support customers using the Arc platform.

• Meeting goals using technologies like AWS ECS, Lambda, Docker, CloudFormation, Step Functions, DynamoDB, among others, with particular emphasis on Step Functions.

• Owning responsibility for running applications using CI/CD practices such as automated builds, deployments, and tests.

• Setting up and reacting to production application monitoring.

• Making technical decisions with consideration for reliability, performance, and cost, influencing others by example.

• Refining engineering best practices, architectural patterns, and promoting industry trends to improve our systems.

• Maintaining codebase consistency, participating in annual architectural and infrastructure scans, and ensuring security best practices are followed.

Leadership and Mentoring:

• Leading multi-team initiatives, persuading and planning strategic projects, and directing ongoing efforts across several teams.

• Driving strategic technical initiatives, including platform modernization, scalability, and infrastructure improvements.

• Leading epics of any size, including creating solution designs, detailed stories, and execution plans.

• Mentoring team members to improve their skills, industry knowledge, and alignment with best practices.

• Teaching effective ways to break down and scope work, reducing complexity to deliver more efficiently.

Collaboration and Process Improvement:

• Actively participating in team agile activities such as story refinement, planning work backlog, work estimation, sprint planning, retros, demos, etc.

• Managing tasks effectively within a distributed remote team, ensuring effective collaboration and communication across locations.

• Representing team goals, products, and projects in departmental discussions and decision-making processes.

• Collaborating across teams, driving consensus and alignment to achieve shared goals.

• Advocating for new technologies and performing functional prototyping to validate