Software Engineer - Developer Experience

About the Position

Software Engineer - Developer Experience

San Francisco, CA • New York, NY • United States

Figma is growing our team of passionate creatives and builders on a mission to make design accessible to all. Figma’s platform helps teams bring ideas to life-whether you're brainstorming, creating a prototype, translating designs into code, or iterating with AI. From idea to product, Figma empowers teams to streamline workflows, move faster, and work together in real time from anywhere in the world. If you're excited to shape the future of design and collaboration, join us!

The Build Systems team within Figma’s Developer Experience organization owns Figma’s build and CI infrastructure, enabling engineers to ship changes to production quickly and safely. We build and operate core platforms across our polyglot monorepo, including build systems, artifact repositories, merge queues, test frameworks, and CI pipelines.

We’re looking for an experienced technical leader to help shape these platforms, uplevel the team, and deliver high-impact platforms that accelerate engineering velocity. The ideal candidate has deep experience with large monolithic codebases, builds durable and scalable systems, and is motivated by solving high-leverage problems that amplify productivity across the engineering organization.

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

Responsibilities

• Drive technical roadmap and strategy for the Build Systems team
• Partner with cross-functional teams and leadership to identify developer pain points and design elegant, scalable solutions
• Lead complex, multi-quarter initiatives reducing build/test times and improving CI reliability, all while balancing technical excellence with pragmatic delivery
• Design, build, and maintain modern developer tools including scalable build systems, distributed CI platforms, and test frameworks that serve thousands of engineers
• Architect and implement large-scale infrastructure on AWS that powers our entire build pipeline to ensure reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency
• Mentor and uplevel the team through technical guidance, code reviews, and architectural leadership, leading by example and actively investing in your teammates’ growth
• Collaborate with product engineers (your customers), infrastructure teams, and executive stakeholders, and communicate technical decisions clearly to audiences ranging from individual contributors to senior leadership
• Keep up to date with industry trends and best practices in build systems, CI, and developer tooling, and incorporate applicable technologies into our roadmap

Requirements

• 5+ years of engineering experience, including 4+ years on Infrastructure, Platform, or Developer Experience teams
• Deep expertise in build systems (e.g., Bazel, Buck, Pants, Gradle) and operating large-scale monorepos
• Experience optimizing CI/CD, building developer tooling at scale, and designing reliable, high-performance distributed systems
• Hands-on experience with AWS, CI platforms (e.g., Buildkite), Infrastructure as Code, and strong coding skills in languages such as Go, TypeScript, Python, or Ruby
• Proven technical leadership, with a track record of setting technical direction, driving cross-team initiatives, and communicating effectively across a wide range of stakeholders

Nice to Have

• Experience migrating large codebases to modern build systems (especially Bazel)
• Experience building test frameworks and improving test infrastructure
• Excellent problem-solving skills, using a systematic and thorough approach grounded in first principles, with a bias for action and a strong focus on impact
• Willingness to work on grungy problems when they have a high impact on the business or the health of our platform
• Deep care for the quality of the software and systems you build, with an artisan mentality and a constant drive to improve your craft, while striking the right balance between idealism and pragmatism
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to write, debug, and optimize code

We Offer

• Competitive salary range: $185,000-$376,000 USD
• Equity and a competitive package of additional benefits, including health, dental, and vision coverage; retirement benefits with company contributions; parental leave and reproductive or family planning support; mental health and wellness benefits; and paid time off
• Paid sick leave, holidays, and other leave benefits in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws
• Paid flexible PTO for exempt employees
• Company recharge days, cell phone and home internet reimbursements, and a number of lifestyle spending accounts
• Sales incentive compensation for most sales roles and an annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles

About the Company

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.

Figma is an equal opportunity workplace - we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity/expression, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

We will work to ensure individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to apply for a role, participate in the interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. If you require accommodation, please reach out to [email protected].

By applying for this job, the candidate acknowledges and agrees that any personal data contained in their application or supporting materials will be processed in accordance with Figma's Candidate Privacy Notice.

Application limits: To help candidates focus on the opportunities most relevant to their skills and experience, Figma limits the number and frequency of applications. These limits apply to all roles:

• Candidates may submit up to 5 applications during any rolling 30-day period.
• Candidates may not reapply to the same role while an application is active or within 90 days of receiving a rejection.

Once the applicable days have passed, candidates are welcome to apply again.