Staff Backend Engineer – Payments & Billing

Staff Backend Engineer – Payments & BillingJoin to apply for the Staff Backend Engineer – Payments & Billing role at Scribd, Inc.

About The CompanyAt Scribd (pronounced “scribbed”), our mission is to spark human curiosity. Join our team as we create a world of stories and knowledge, democratize the exchange of ideas and information, and empower collective expertise through our three products: Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare. We support a culture where our employees can be real and be bold;

where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists;

and where every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer. When it comes to workplace structure, we believe in balancing individual flexibility and community connections. It’s through our flexible work benefit, Scribd Flex, that employees – in partnership with their manager – can choose the daily work-style that best suits their individual needs. A key tenet of Scribd Flex is our prioritization of intentional in‑person moments to build collaboration, culture, and connection. For this reason, occasional in‑person attendance is required for all Scribd employees, regardless of their location.

Location EligibilityEmployees must have their primary residence in or near one of the following cities.

United States

Atlanta

Austin

Boston

Dallas

Denver

Chicago

Houston

Jacksonville

Los Angeles

Miami

New York City

Phoenix

Portland

Sacramento

Salt Lake City

San Diego

San Francisco

Seattle

Washington D.C.

Canada

Ottawa

Toronto

Vancouver

Mexico

Mexico City

What You’ll Do

Lead the technical architecture and implementation of Scribd’s payments and billing systems, the backbone of our subscription business.

Design, build, and operate backend services that power subscription payments at global scale.

Own billing lifecycle, global payments, invoicing, reconciliation, and financial reliability—integrating with multiple providers (Stripe, Adyen, Braintree) and supporting international currencies and local methods.

Ensure compliance and security of financial systems through PCI DSS, tokenization, encryption, and secure data handling.

Foster a culture of technical excellence while driving scalable, resilient, and observable financial systems that enable teams to move fast, simplify complexity, and deliver revenue with confidence.

Modernize legacy systems and eliminate technical debt to improve velocity and scalability.

Partner with Product, Finance, Risk, Platform, and Analytics to deliver secure, reliable financial flows, leveraging data, metrics, and telemetry to uncover trends, resolve anomalies, and guide the team with clarity and foresight.

Mentor engineers, shape cross‑team technical strategy, and tackle some of the hardest scaling and security challenges in the company.

We’re Looking For Someone Who

Has 8+ years of backend engineering experience, with deep expertise in building and scaling distributed systems for financial or mission‑critical workloads.

Brings a strong foundation in data modeling, transactional consistency, and high‑throughput architectures, with hands‑on SQL (e.G., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and familiarity with NoSQL and caching.

Is skilled in observability and reliability practices: defining SLOs, implementing metrics/alerts, debugging distributed systems, and leading incident response.

Has strong coding ability in at least one modern backend language such as Ruby (preferred), Java, Go, or Python, with a focus on clean, maintainable, and secure code.

Has a proven track record of technical leadership: setting architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and driving large‑scale migrations or modernization efforts.

Communicates clearly and collaborates across product, finance, risk, and platform teams, influencing both technical and business decisions.

Contributes to cross‑team initiatives (mentoring, architecture review groups, knowledge sharing) that shape Scribd’s engineering culture.

It’s a Plus If You

Has strong coding ability in Ruby.

Have deep experience designing and operating payment or billing systems.

Have integrated with major payment service providers (Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, PayPal) and managed multi‑currency or local payment methods.

Bring knowledge of compliance and security standards (PCI DSS, encryption, tokenization).

Understand fraud prevention strategies (chargebacks, retries, card fingerprinting, abuse detection).

Have led large‑scale migrations between payment providers or billing systems with minimal customer impact.

Benefits, Perks, and Wellbeing At Scribd

Benefits/perks listed may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Scribd and the geographical location where you work.

Healthcare Insurance Coverage (Medical/Dental/Vision): 100% paid for employees

12 weeks paid parental leave

Short‑term/long‑term disability plans

401k/RSP matching

Onboarding stipend for home office peripherals + accessories

Learning & Development allowance

Learning & Development programs

Quarterly stipend for Wellness, WiFi, etc.

Mental Health