Manager, Software Engineering (Application Platform)

Figma is growing our team of passionate people on a mission to make design accessible to all. Born on the Web, Figma helps entire product teams brainstorm, design and build better products — from start to finish. Whether it’s consolidating tools, simplifying workflows, or collaborating across teams and time zones, Figma makes the design process faster, more efficient, and fun while keeping everyone on the same page. From great products to long-lasting companies, we believe that nothing great is made alone—come make with us!

The Application Platform team is responsible for Figma’s core backend platform. This team develops the application primitives used by backend engineers across the company, like our system for running asynchronous jobs, routing API, data serialization patterns, backfill framework, and more. Application Platform also stewards the core architecture of our backend codebase, with an emphasis on scaling development velocity to our fast-growing engineering team, by defining best practices used across the company and enabling teams to decouple their product verticals from each other. We’re now looking for a manager to lead and scale this team as Figma’s world-class design and collaboration products continue to grow!

Ideal candidates will have experience working in large-scale backend codebases and implementing scalable patterns. They’ve implemented and maintained robust & reliable, distributed systems that form the backbone of core product functionality. Most importantly, they love building for builders.

This is a full-time role that can be held from one of our US hubs or remotely in the continental United States.

What you’ll do at Figma:

• Manage, support and grow a diverse team of engineers who design and build scalable services to power Figma’s infrastructure.
• Collaborate closely with backend developers to develop the core frameworks and systems that comprise every engineer’s toolbox.
• Evangelize best practices throughout the engineering team to keep code quality high.
• Partner with engineering leadership to set strategy, priorities, and mission for teams and projects. 
• Establish trust within and across teams by creating accountability and a positive work environment in partnership with other leaders in the organization.
• Grow your career in an engaged and creative engineering community

We'd love to hear from you if you have:

• 3+ years of experience managing and leading a high output engineering team working on distributed systems and online services
• 6+ years overall experience building and scaling distributed systems and infrastructure components as a leader and/or individual contributor
• Strong technical communication skills, and demonstrated ability to build and leverage relationships with other engineering and technical leaders
• Demonstrated leadership skills in building a high-performing and highly engaged engineering team. Proven track record of motivating, mentoring, and guiding senior/staff engineers with 10+ years of experience
• Demonstrated experience with understanding the needs of our internal client teams and aligning roadmap to drive maximum business impact

While not required, it’s an added plus if you also have:

• A commitment to build an inclusive and diverse culture
• Experience leading a team that’s owned a monolithic API backend, or leading a transition from monolithic architecture to a modularized / service-based one

At Figma, one of our values is Grow as you go. We believe in hiring smart, curious people who are excited to learn and develop their skills. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the points outlined in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Pay Transparency Disclosure

If based in Figma’s San Francisco or New York hub offices, this role has the annual base salary range stated below.  

Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location. The listed range is a guideline, and the range for this role may be modified. For roles that are available to be filled remotely, the pay range is localized according to employee work location by a factor of between 80% and 100% of range. Please discuss your specific work loca