Staff Engineer

Condé Nast is a global media company producing the highest quality content with a footprint of more than 1 billion consumers in 32 territories through print, digital, video and social platforms. The company’s portfolio includes many of the world’s most respected and influential media properties including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Self, GQ, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler/Traveller, Allure, AD, Bon Appétit and Wired, among others.

Location:

About The role:

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, which will see you driving engineering excellence across multiple systems and teams. 

Operating within a domain or sub-domain, you turn architectural vision into elegant, scalable and reliable systems. Leading through technical mastery and influence, you will drive design; guide implementation and mentor engineers to solve complex problems with clarity and creativity. Raising the bar in terms of quality, making excellence scalable, turning design principles into engineering reality and bringing architecture to life in code. Staff Engineers join the dots, anticipate challenges and set the technical direction to make ambition achievable. 

What you’ll do

Reporting to a Director of Engineering and working closely with Engineering Managers, you ensure solutions are built for performance, resilience and long-term evolution. By combining deep technical expertise with strong design and collaboration skills - systems are built right: performant, reliable, maintainable and aligned with business and architectural goals. 

As the most senior technical IC within delivery, you act as technical anchor for your domain/sub-domain; as you design, review and implement complex systems; mentor other engineers; and ensure architectural intent translates into execution reality.

Domain / Systems Scope:
This role will be focused on backend systems supporting customer preferences, newsletters, and email orchestration, including high-volume event processing and integrations with third-party email service providers.

You will have proven technical expertise with JavaScript and Node.js, cloud-native systems on AWS and Kubernetes, schema and data model design, and production observability with Datadog. Experience integrating with or migrating between email platforms such as Sailthru and Iterable, as well as working with data platforms like Databricks, is strongly preferred.

Technical Design, Strategy &  System Ownership:

• Lead the design, implementation and optimization of multiple systems or services across a domain/sub-domain.

  
  

• Ensure systems meet functional and non-functional requirements (scalability, reliability, performance, cost efficiency).

  
  

• Conduct deep technical reviews and champion craftsmanship, testing, and code quality.

  
  

• Identify opportunities for reusability, refactoring, and simplification of the technical landscape.

  
  

• Evaluate emerging technologies and advocate pragmatic adoption.

  
  

• Drive experimentation and continuous improvement in technical and delivery processes.

  
  

Sub-Domain/Code Expertise:

• Stay hands-on: writing, reviewing and optimizing code for key components and frameworks.

  
  

• Influence design decisions, ensuring the right patterns and technologies are used for each context.

  
  

• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices:  automation, observability, CI/CD, and cloud-native design.

  
  

• Lead or contribute to resolving critical incidents, root-cause analysis, and prevention of systemic issues.

  
  

You’ll partner with:

• Solution Architects to shape end-to-end designs and integration points between systems and ensure technical implementation reflects architecture standards and business intent.

  
  

• Engineering Managers and Engineering delivery teams to ensure technical feasibility, deliver alignment and resourcing balance.

  
  

• Mentor engineers across teams: elevating skills in design, performance optimization and maintainability. And share expertise through code reviews, documentation and internal presentations/coaching.

  
  

• Business stakeholders occasionally, as solution architects take the business facing role).

  
  

• QA and technical program managers. 

  
  

About you:

• Deep technical expertise gained in a leadership position within a domain or sub-domain gained across multiple geographies, ideally within the publishing and digital platforms domain.

  
  

• Proven track record of mentoring engineers and shaping system evolution.

  
  

• Ability to look across teams within and across domains to connect dots, anticipate challenges, and set technical direction.

  
  

• Delivery focused with the ability to stay hands-on: writing, reviewing, and optimising code for key components and frameworks.

  
  

• First class communication skills to convey instructions in a clear and concise manner, so teams understand what is to be delivered.

  
  

• Always one-step ahead - you seek out new technologies and ways of working to drive improvements.

  
  

If you are interested in this opportunity, please apply below, and we will review your application as soon as possible. You can update your resume or upload a cover letter at any time by accessing your candidate profile.

Condé Nast is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, familial status and other legally protected characteristics.