Staff Backend Software Engineer
At a glance
Senior Backend Engineering role at Fox Corporation. New York · full-time · $143,000–$190,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Lead REST APIs and Celery workers for publishing, media processing, ad workflows, imports and reporting
- Keep distributed workloads reliable by tuning queues, retries, deduplication, backpressure and incident logging
- Guide data flows across PostgreSQL, Redis, object storage and warehouse-backed reporting
- Lead Terraform and AWS application changes, including access controls, networking, protections and staged releases
- Set testing and monitoring practices, then represent backend trade-offs in design, planning and incident discussions
What you bring
- At least ten years building backend or platform systems, with substantial ownership of large services
- Strong Python skills and experience designing APIs, background jobs, failure handling and scalable services
- Hands-on Celery or similar job processing with RabbitMQ-class brokers, plus PostgreSQL and practical Redis use
- Significant AWS and GCP infrastructure experience, including leading Terraform changes and cloud CI/CD
- A record of security-conscious engineering, technical leadership and cross-team delivery through influence
Who this fits
This staff-level role suits a backend engineer who can lead architecture and delivery while still working hands-on across services, data and cloud infrastructure. The work includes defining responsible AI-assisted development practices and improving AI use in system design and developer workflows. The role is hybrid in New York, with Texas candidates also considered.
From the employer
OVERVIEW OF THE COMPANY
Fox CorporationUnder the FOX banner, we produce and distribute content through some of the world’s leading and most valued brands, including: FOX News Media, FOX Sports, FOX Entertainment, FOX Television Stations and Tubi Media Group. We empower a diverse range of creators to imagine and develop culturally significant content, while building an organization that thrives on creative ideas, operational expertise and strategic thinking.JOB DESCRIPTION
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are looking for a Staff Backend Software Engineer to lead delivery of reliable, scalable services for audio/video hosting, monetization, and analytics in the media and creator space at a global footprint scale. You will work primarily in Python on APIs, asynchronous background job orchestration, infrastructure-as-code, and data pipelines alongside Celery, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, and cloud primitives on AWS and GCP, partnering with product, frontend, and infrastructure engineers.
A SNAPSHOT OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead design and implementation of RESTful APIs and async workers(Celery) for publishing, media processing, SSAI and VAST-related workflows, imports, and reporting.
- Own reliability and performance of distributed systems and workloads: queue design, deduplication, chord and dispatch patterns, prefetch tuning, backpressure, and operational logging that supports incident response.
- Drive data and integration decisions across PostgreSQL, Redis-backed coordination, object storage, and systems such as data warehouse-backed reporting (batching, limits, and cost-aware query patterns).
- Lead or significantly contribute to Terraform and AWS changes affecting the application: EB tiers, IAM, networking, WAF and rate limits, observability hooks, and phased rollouts.
- Raise the bar on observability: structured logging, Prometheus-style metrics, Grafana and CloudWatch usage, and alarms wired to actionable on-call signals
- Define and evolve testing strategy for critical paths (unit and regression around task helpers and services, AI-driven testing), CI-friendly checks, and operational readiness for risky migrations.
- Represent backend concerns in planning, design reviews, and incident-style discussions; communicate trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical partners.
- Anticipate scaling and complexity: propose phased migrations, safer defaults, and long-term maintainability over short-term hacks.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
- 10+ years of professional backend or backend-heavy engineering experience in platform systems, or equivalent depth, including meaningful ownership of large services or platforms.
- Strong Python and a track record designing service-oriented systems: APIs, background jobs, idempotency, failure modes, and capacity thinking.
- Deep hands-on experience with Celery (or similar) and message brokers (AMQP and RabbitMQ-class), including heartbeats, retries, queue splits, and operational debugging.
- Strong SQL (PostgreSQL) and practical Redis usage beyond simple caching: coordination, rate limiting, circuit breaking, and correctness under concurrency.
- Substantial cloud infrastructure experience with GCP and AWS (for example AWS: EC2, ALB, IAM, CloudWatch, S3, RDS and proxy patterns) and comfort leading Terraform changes.
- Container building, deployment (Docker, ECS, Kubernetes), and multi-cloud networking a strong plus.
- Substantial experience with CI/CD in cloud environment.
- Demonstrated leadership in security-minded engineering: scoped IAM, TLS for data stores, network egress discipline, WAF and rate-limiting concepts.
- Experience with authorization at scale (RBAC, ABAC, or policy engines) is a strong plus.
- Excellent judgment under ambiguity, written communication, and a record of raising team quality without blocking delivery.
- Experience in early start-up or otherwise fast moving, rapidly evolving environments, and have ideally built products from 0 to 1.
- Experience successfully driving cross-team alignment to get impactful work shipped, and work with influence over authority.
- Demonstrated experience establishing engineering standards, component architectures, and development best practices
Technical skills
- Languages and runtimes: Python, TypeScript
- Async and jobs: Celery, AMQP, and RabbitMQ
- Data: PostgreSQL, Redis, S3 patterns; Druid, BigQuery, or large analytical query constraints (nice to have)
- APIs: REST, JSON, gRPC, schema validation patterns
- Cloud and Infrastructure-as-Code: AWS, Terraform, Containers, Docker, Elastic Beanstalk exposure
- Observability: Prometheus metrics, Grafana, CloudWatch, structured logging
- Testing and delivery: pytest, Git, GitHub Actions/workflow-style CI/CD
- Domain (nice to have): media, entertainment, creator economy, CTV, OTT, SSAI, VAST, CDN, edge processing
The AI Mandate: AI-Driven Development Practice
This role goes beyond traditional engineering. As a Staff Engineer, you will help define how AI is integrated into backend development. The goal is to unlock smarter execution, faster delivery, and automation at scale, while ensuring responsible and secure use of these technologies.
This includes but is not limited to:
AI-Augmented Backend Development:
Establishing best practices for AI-assisted coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) to accelerate development while maintaining high standards for correctness, security, and performance. You will set the bar for responsible and effective AI usage across backend teams.
AI-Enhanced Architecture & Optimization:
Exploring and guiding how AI can assist in system design, performance tuning, and anomaly detection across distributed backend systems. You will influence how AI-powered insights improve throughput, latency, and operational efficiency.
AI-Driven Developer Experience:
Driving improvements in internal tools and workflows that leverage AI to enhance productivity, code quality, and observability, helping evolve backend engineering culture into an AI-native practice.
Willing to consider candidates in Texas
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We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable law.
Pursuant to state and local pay disclosure requirements, the pay rate/range for this role, with final offer amount dependent on education, skills, experience, and location is $143,000.00-190,000.00 annually. This role is also eligible for various benefits, including medical/dental/vision, insurance, a 401(k) plan, paid time off, and other benefits in accordance with applicable plan documents. Benefits for Union represented employees will be in accordance with the applicable collective bargaining agreement.
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