About The Company

Philo is pioneering the future of television by delivering a seamless and personalized streaming experience across all devices. Our innovative platform allows users to enjoy their favorite shows with effortless playback, insightful discovery features, and easy sharing options. Headquartered in San Francisco with additional offices in New York City and Cambridge, MA, Philo is backed by industry leaders such as NEA, Warner Brothers Discovery, Viacom, AMC, and A&E. Our leadership team comprises seasoned professionals from HBO, Tubi, and Meraki, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.

At Philo, we prioritize our people—both our subscribers and our team members. Our company culture emphasizes transparency, collaboration, and diversity. We believe that a diverse workforce enhances creativity and drives better product outcomes. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive and contribute to shaping the future of TV entertainment.

Our offerings include over 70 top-rated networks, a vast library of more than 85,000 titles, and features like unlimited DVR, multi-device streaming, and premium add-ons such as STARZ, MGM+, and HBO Max Basic With Ads. We strive to create a dynamic, engaging, and user-centric platform that meets the evolving needs of our customers.

About The Role

Philo is seeking a Lead Backend Software Engineer (Product) to join our dynamic engineering team. In this role, you will be instrumental in developing and scaling our core Product API platform, which powers a vast array of non-media interactions across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms. Your work will directly impact millions of users by enabling rich, personalized experiences, including search, recommendations, notifications, and content management.

The ideal candidate will possess a deep technical background in building scalable APIs, services, and platform infrastructure. You will lead architectural decisions, drive reliability, and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to deliver innovative features. Your expertise will help ensure our API infrastructure remains performant, secure, and scalable as our user base continues to grow. You will also mentor junior engineers, advocate for best practices, and contribute to our technical vision and roadmap.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience
• 2+ years of experience mentoring and guiding engineering teams
• Strong expertise in designing and implementing GraphQL APIs at scale
• Proven experience building efficient, highly available backend services using NodeJS, Ruby, Golang, Python, or similar languages
• Experience operating in cloud environments such as AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes
• Deep understanding of API design principles, caching strategies, and performance optimization
• Experience working with large datasets, relational and non-relational databases, and data warehousing
• Strong systems thinking skills with the ability to design cohesive API abstractions
• Experience building proxy and aggregation layers integrating multiple backend services
• Familiarity with experimentation frameworks, feature flags, and A/B testing infrastructure
• Excellent communication skills to collaborate with product, design, and data science teams
• Understanding of video streaming ecosystems and multi-platform API challenges
• Experience with product-facing APIs or machine learning systems is a plus
  
  

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the Product API team, guiding system architecture and design decisions
• Collaborate with product and client engineering teams to design and deliver high-performance GraphQL APIs that enhance user experience
• Own and evolve key product subsystems, including recommendations, catalog, search, notifications, user preferences, and experiments
• Build and maintain proxy and augmentation layers that integrate various domain services into a unified API platform
• Drive improvements in API reliability, scalability, and performance, ensuring sub-second response times and high availability
• Work with data science and analytics teams to instrument APIs for experimentation, A/B testing, and feature rollouts
• Develop observability tools to monitor API performance, troubleshoot issues, and optimize cache utilization
• Collaborate with infrastructure teams to optimize database queries, caching strategies, and system scaling
• Ensure security and privacy considerations are integrated into API design and deployment
• Model best practices and promote a culture of quality and continuous improvement within the team
  
  

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage for employees and their families
• 401(k) plan with employer matching contributions
• Flexible working hours and remote work options within the U.S.
• Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave
• Annual vacation bonus of $2,000
• Annual professional development and educational assistance of $5,250
• Home office and TV stipends during the first year of employment
• Monthly bonus for office attendance and commuter benefits
• Free Gympass subscription for wellness and fitness activities
• Dog-friendly office environment
• Opportunities for career growth and participation in shaping the future of TV streaming
  
  

Equal Opportunity

Philo is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, or any other protected