Staff Software Engineer

Fern

$130K — $180K *
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • Proficiency in crafting developer experiences with a focus on taste
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills for technical problem-solving
  • Bonus: Experience building with TypeScript

Responsibilities

  • Set technical direction and drive system design decisions
  • Build systems for durability, scale, and performance
  • Mentor engineers through code reviews and architectural discussions
  • Collaborate with product designers and frontend engineers for user experience
  • Identify and resolve scaling bottlenecks proactively

Benefits

  • Prime office location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
  • Paid lunch/meals at the office
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance
  • Unlimited vacation
Full Job Description
About Fern

Fern helps software companies build a world-class API experience. Our customers include industry leaders like Nvidia, Square, and Twilio, as well as fast-growing AI companies like ElevenLabs and OpenRouter.

In the next year, the majority of API integrations will be implemented by AI agents. Agents don't read marketing pages. They need strongly typed schemas, structured endpoints, deterministic contracts, and documentation that can be fed into a context window.

Our team is small and talent-dense. We're a team of builders from Google, Palantir, Amazon, and Uber, working together in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We were acquired by Postman - giving us access to 40 million users and 98% of the Fortune 500 - while maintaining the independence, speed, and ownership of a startup.

About the Role

As a Staff Software Engineer at Fern, you'll build APIs, scale AI infrastructure, and design developer experiences that reach millions of people.
  • Set technical direction: Drive system design decisions around data modeling, performance, correctness, and reliability. Identify scaling bottlenecks before they become problems.
  • Build for durability and scale: Ensure our systems are performant, observable, secure, and resilient under real-world production load across cloud infrastructure (e.g., Vercel, AWS).
  • Mentor motivated engineers: Developing people is as important as developing software. From in-depth code reviews to high-level architectural discussions, you'll help elevate the skills and impact of those around you.
  • Collaborate across the stack: Partner closely with product designers and frontend engineers working in TypeScript and Next.js to define polished interfaces and slick user experiences.
What We're Looking For
  • You have 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
  • We're building open source and we care deeply about taste - we're looking for builders that know developer experience is a craft.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills to solve technical problems with customers.
  • Bonus: Experience building with TypeScript.


Benefits
  • Prime office location in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
  • Paid lunch/meals at the office
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance
  • Unlimited vacation

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