Senior Staff Software Engineer, Cms and Localization

Webflow Webflow · Enterprise · CA · Remote · Engineering

Senior Staff Software Engineer to define and drive the technical future of Webflow's CMS, Localization, and Commerce systems. This role involves owning and driving technical strategy, leading multi-team initiatives, and establishing architectural guardrails for a large-scale SaaS platform. The role also emphasizes mentoring and influencing cross-functional teams, with a thoughtful perspective on AI-assisted development.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own and drive the technical strategy for the Compose pillar, aligning architecture with ambitious product goals and measurable business outcomes.
  2. Identify and lead multi-team initiatives that unlock new competitive capabilities; not just incremental improvements.
  3. Translate product vision into concrete technical problems and execution plans.
  4. Lead high-impact efforts from architecture through delivery, especially where scale, ambiguity, or systemic risk is highest.
  5. Establish and evolve architectural guardrails and governance processes to prevent drift as we scale.

Skills

Required

  • BS / BA college degree or relevant experience
  • 12+ years of experience building and evolving complex, distributed SaaS systems.
  • Demonstrated ownership of large-scale architectural initiatives that unlocked new product capabilities or competitive advantages.
  • Deep backend systems experience in one or more modern server environments (e.g., Java, Go, Python, Node.js), with the ability to ramp quickly in new stacks.
  • Experience designing and operating API-driven systems backed by relational databases such as Postgres or Aurora.
  • A track record of solving difficult scalability, data modeling, or interoperability challenges.
  • Experience influencing cross-team architecture in platform environments.
  • A principled but pragmatic approach to decoupled architectures and sound design principles.
  • A thoughtful perspective on AI-assisted development — understanding both its leverage and its risks.
  • Take full ownership of ambitious technical challenges, staying calm under pressure and disciplined when making high-risk decisions to drive projects to resolution.
  • Enjoy mentoring emerging technical talent, along with persuasively challenging assumptions at all levels—including senior leadership—without being dogmatic.

Nice to have

  • Node.js and TypeScript in large production systems

What the JD emphasized

  • AI-assisted development — understanding both its leverage and its risks
  • AI-assisted tooling