Software Engineer - Distributed Systems

About the Position

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!

At Figma, infrastructure is at the heart of everything we build. As a Software Engineer on our Infrastructure team, you’ll help design, build, and operate the systems that power our real-time collaborative design tools used by millions of people worldwide. We’re scaling fast, and we’re looking for experienced distributed systems engineers across a variety of teams. Whether you’re passionate about storage, compute orchestration, developer tooling, networking, or real-time data systems, this role offers an opportunity to shape the technical foundation of one of the most beloved design platforms in the world.

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

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable and reliable infrastructure systems that support product innovation and user collaboration at scale
• Architect and evolve distributed systems including storage platforms, streaming infrastructure, and compute orchestration
• Improve developer experience by building internal platforms, CI/CD systems, build tools, and APIs
• Collaborate across product and infrastructure teams to design secure, maintainable, and performant systems
• Participate in shaping platform strategy, roadmaps, and engineering best practices across the organization
• Debug and resolve complex production issues that span services and layers of the stack
• Mentor engineers and foster a culture of collaboration, inclusivity, and technical excellence

Requirements

• 5+ years of Software Engineering experience, specifically in backend or infrastructure engineering
• Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts such as sharding, replication, consistency, and eventual convergence
• Experience with cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure), infrastructure-as-code, and container orchestration
• Proficiency in languages such as Go, TypeScript, Python, Rust, or Ruby
• Strong system design skills and a track record of architecting resilient production systems
• Excellent communication skills, with experience collaborating across teams and mentoring others

Nice to Have

• Experience scaling storage platforms (e.g., Postgres, Redis, S3, DynamoDB) or operating streaming systems like Kafka
• Background in traffic management, DDoS mitigation, or service mesh technologies (e.g., Envoy, Istio)
• A history of developing complex, real-time distributed systems at scale
• A passion for building developer productivity tools, including development environments, CI/CD pipelines, and build systems
• Experience with evolving large-scale, shared developer platforms to improve reliability and developer velocity
• Strong problem-solving skills and a bias for action-especially when tackling high-impact, gritty challenges
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to write, debug, and optimize code

We Offer

• Competitive salary range: $153,000 - $376,000 USD
• Equity options
• Comprehensive benefits package 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
• Flexible paid time off (PTO) for exempt employees, subject to manager approval
• Additional benefits may include 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].