Software Engineer, Developer Experience
Figma
Job Overview
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Job Description
Software Engineer, Developer Experience at Figma
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!
The Build Systems team within Figma’s Developer Experience organization owns Figma’s build and CI infrastructure, enabling engineers to ship changes to production quickly and safely. We build and operate core platforms across our polyglot monorepo, including build systems, artifact repositories, merge queues, test frameworks, and CI pipelines.
We’re looking for an experienced technical leader to help shape these platforms, uplevel the team, and deliver high-impact platforms that accelerate engineering velocity. The ideal candidate has deep experience with large monolithic codebases, builds durable and scalable systems, and is motivated by solving high-leverage problems that amplify productivity across the engineering organization.
This is a full time role that can be held from one of our US hubs or remotely in the United States.
What you'll do at Figma:
- Drive technical roadmap and strategy for the Build Systems team
- Partner with cross-functional teams and leadership to identify developer pain points and design elegant, scalable solutions
- Lead complex, multi-quarter initiatives reducing build/test times and improving CI reliability, all while balancing technical excellence with pragmatic delivery
- Design, build, and maintain modern developer tools including scalable build systems, distributed CI platforms, and test frameworks that serve thousands of engineers
- Architect and implement large-scale infrastructure on AWS that powers our entire build pipeline to ensure reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency
- Mentor and uplevel the team through technical guidance, code reviews, and architectural leadership, leading by example and actively investing in your teammates’ growth
- Collaborate with product engineers (your customers), infrastructure teams, and executive stakeholders, and communicate technical decisions clearly to audiences ranging from individual contributors to senior leadership
- Keep up to date with industry trends and best practices in build systems, CI, and developer tooling, and incorporate applicable technologies into our roadmap
We’d love to hear from you if you have:
- 8+ years of engineering experience, including 4+ years on Infrastructure, Platform, or Developer Experience teams
- Deep expertise in build systems (e.g., Bazel, Buck, Pants, Gradle) and operating large-scale monorepos
- Experience optimizing CI/CD, building developer tooling at scale, and designing reliable, high-performance distributed systems
- Hands-on experience with AWS, CI platforms (e.g., Buildkite), Infrastructure as Code, and strong coding skills in languages such as Go, TypeScript, Python, or Ruby
- Proven technical leadership, with a track record of setting technical direction, driving cross-team initiatives, and communicating effectively across a wide range of stakeholders
While it’s not required, it’s an added plus if you also have:
- Experience migrating large codebases to modern build systems (especially Bazel)
- Experience building test frameworks and improving test infrastructure
- Have excellent problem-solving skills, using a systematic and thorough approach grounded in first principles, with a bias for action and a strong focus on impact
- You’re willing to work on grungy problems when they have a high impact on the business or the health of our platform
- Care deeply about the quality of the software and systems you build, with an artisan mentality and a constant drive to improve your craft, while striking the right balance between idealism and pragmatism
- Finally, Figma is a close-knit company with a strong culture that promotes inclusivity and collaboration, taking ambitious goals and having fun doing so. You deeply value these traits and see yourself actively contributing to it
Pay Transparency Disclosure:
If based in Figma’s San Francisco or New York hub offices, this role has the annual base salary range stated below. Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications, market demands, and specific work location. The listed range is a guideline, and the range for this role may be modified. For roles that are available to be filled remotely, the pay range is localized according to employee work location by a factor of between 80% and 100% of range. Figma offers equity, competitive benefits, and an annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles.
Annual Base Salary Range: $228,000—$350,000 USD
Key skills/competency:
- Build Systems
- CI/CD Optimization
- Distributed Systems
- AWS Infrastructure
- Technical Leadership
- Monorepo Management
- Developer Tooling
- Go/TypeScript/Python/Ruby
- Test Frameworks
- Engineering Velocity
How to Get Hired at Figma
- Research Figma's culture: Study their mission, values, recent news, and employee testimonials on LinkedIn and Glassdoor.
- Tailor your resume for Developer Experience: Highlight deep expertise in build systems, CI/CD, and large-scale monorepo environments.
- Showcase technical leadership: Emphasize experience driving technical roadmaps, cross-functional initiatives, and mentoring teams.
- Prepare for AWS and programming challenges: Be ready to discuss your hands-on experience with AWS and strong coding skills in Go, TypeScript, Python, or Ruby.
- Articulate impact and problem-solving: Demonstrate how you've designed reliable, high-performance systems and solved high-leverage engineering productivity problems.
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