Staff Software Engineer – Platform

About this Role

As our Staff Software Engineer – Platform, you will set architectural direction and serve as a senior technical leader across our Infrastructure, Shared Services, and Publishing groups. You will get to shape foundational systems (APIs, Eventing, CMS, DAM, Search, Authentication, Payment Processing), drive cross-cutting capabilities, and partner with Product and Design to influence roadmaps — all while staying hands-on and shipping code. To be successful, you will need principal-caliber scope and judgment, strong opinions on performance and developer experience, and a genuine openness to BibleProject's content and paradigm for approaching the Bible.

Your home squad is Shared Services, where you will serve as Lead Engineer — a role, not a title. As Lead, you remain on-field writing code, coordinate technical direction within the Product Trio, and tighten decision loops, while people management stays with the Engineering Manager. Your influence, however, extends across the full Platform portfolio.

Most importantly, you’ll be an integral part of maturing the product engineering culture of BibleProject, setting and maintaining a high bar with regards to our standards and people and working to create an environment where great technical professionals like yourself can ship work worthy of our mission at a sustainable pace that reflects the BibleProject values: generous, unified, thoughtful, creative, humble, and unhurried.

What You'll Be Doing
Core Responsibilities:

Leadership

Set technical direction and long-term architectural vision across the Platform portfolio; drive clarity on system boundaries, data contracts, API strategy, and success metrics.
Lead cross-functional technical discussions; align Product, Design, and Engineering on scope, trade-offs, and timelines; document decisions and rationale.
Partner with the Group Product Manager, Engineering Managers, and Director of Engineering to shape roadmaps, anticipate risks, surface unknowns early, and propose mitigation paths.
Mentor and uplevel engineers through design guidance, reviews, pairing, and structured feedback; foster a culture of learning and agility.
Establish and evangelize engineering standards (testing strategy, performance, accessibility, security, reliability) and ensure consistent application.
Participate in biweekly planning and execution rhythms as a technical leader and thought partner; help sequence work for incremental delivery.

When serving as Lead Engineer for the Shared Services squad:

Act as a peer leader within the trio; keep feedback windows small, bias toward action, and optimize mean time to decision — escalating only when org-level alignment is required.
Coordinate the squad's technical plan within broader engineering standards; communicate decisions transparently and invite guidance.
Provide timely, specific feedback to teammates and proactive upward feedback to the Engineering Manager on team health, risks, and technical debt.
Lead by example through high-quality code contributions and thoughtful reviews.

Responsibility

Lead design and delivery of complex, multi-service features; write tests and documentation; ship changes through CI/CD with high reliability.
Own the health of critical services and domains: define SLOs/SLIs, proactively monitor, triage issues, lead post-incident reviews, and participate in on-call.
Drive platform strategy for shared concerns: authentication, authorization, content delivery, API gateways, and developer tooling.
Collaborate with DevOps to evolve CI/CD workflows and infrastructure; drive automation and improve developer experience.
Raise code quality through systematic refactoring, dependency upgrades, and targeted migrations — balancing near-term delivery with long-term maintainability.

Expertise

Recognized expert across the platform's primary stack; apply patterns that yield reliable, maintainable systems at scale.
Define API strategy and design/implement services (including GraphQL) that model clear contracts and enable product agility.
Demonstrate deep experience with distributed systems and monorepo architecture in production; select patterns (idempotency, caching, retries, back-pressure) to improve resilience and performance.
Work effectively in cloud-native environments (AWS, Docker, Kubernetes) to build, deploy, troubleshoot, and operate services; guide others in effective usage.
Use observability tools (logs, metrics, traces) to verify behavior, diagnose complex issues, and inform proactive improvements.
Evaluate and introduce emerging technologies with sound judgment; balance innovation with stability and operational readiness.

What We're Looking For

12+ years of development experience on a product team, with repeated impact delivering complex, cross-team projects.
Demonstrated ability to set architectural direction across multiple teams and domains; track record of leading design and execution for multi-service features, platform capabilities, and large-scale migrations.
Experience operating at a Staff or Senior Staff level (or equivalent scope) in a product engineering organization, with clear examples of raising the technical bar beyond a single team.
Strong testing habits; extensive experience with CI/CD and cloud-hosted services.
Clear, candid communicator with strong asynchronous and written communication skills; seeks feedback and makes notable business impact.
Openness to BibleProject's mission, content, and paradigm for approaching the Bible.

About BibleProject
Portland, Oregon, Founded in 2014

BibleProject is an educational technology and media studio whose mission is to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

We have grown significantly in the area of multimedia technology. What began with two animated videos now encompasses multiple platforms and products—including over 200 videos. Our website and app serve as connection hubs to our ever-growing library of resources. Classroom, our online learning platform, offers accessible, graduate-level Bible classes.

These, and all of our supporting products, continue to be completely free to audiences around the world, thanks to the ongoing generosity of our patrons.

Location: This role can be performed from anywhere in the United States. Occasional travel to Portland, OR may be required.

Beginning: June 2026

Reporting to: Tommy Ekstrand, Director of Engineering

Compensation & Benefits:

The annual salary range for this role is $125,000 to $160,000.
- Competitive salary that scales with experience directly related to this role. Top tier in non-profit market but will not match similar roles in for-profit companies.
Medical, dental, vision, life, short- and long-term disability insurance for employees and families, with premiums covered 100% by BibleProject.
401(k) with 4% employer match.
Flexible PTO.
4 weeks of org-wide synchronized rest breaks.
Paid parental leave.
Paid learning stipend.
Home Office resources as needed.
A culture focused on belonging and thriving.

BibleProject is an equal opportunity employer.

At the heart of BibleProject is a deep-seated belief that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. This foundational conviction shapes every resource the organization creates. It began with a simple yet profound idea between two friends, Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, who wanted to make the biblical story accessible to everyone, everywhere. They envisioned a way to present complex biblical themes that was both intellectually honest and approachable, leading to the creation of their first animated videos in 2014. This endeavor was born from a passion for visual storytelling and a deep understanding of Scripture, a combination that continues to define the organization's work. The culture at BibleProject is one of generosity, humility, and creativity, reflecting their view of a generous God. The team operates with an abundance mindset, fostering an environment where every person is valued and has something to contribute.

The journey of BibleProject is a testament to the power of community and shared vision. As a crowdfunded nonprofit, the organization is fueled by the generosity of its supporters, allowing all of its resources—from videos and podcasts to in-depth classes—to be offered for free. This model has enabled them to reach millions across the globe, transcending cultural and denominational boundaries. The team, a diverse group of artists, designers, developers, and scholars, is united by a shared mission to help people experience the Bible's transformative power. Whether working remotely or in their Portland office, the culture is one of connection and creativity, driven by a collective passion for their mission. They are constantly exploring new ways to engage their audience, from developing a mobile app to creating graduate-level courses, all with the goal of helping people become lifelong students of the Bible. It's a collaborative, full-time labor of love, and for the team at BibleProject, it feels like they are just getting started.

Staff Software Engineer - Platform