Staff Software Engineer, Backend

About the Team

The Objects Platform team owns the APIs that power how customers, partners, and external developers build on HubSpot’s object model. Our public APIs are a critical product surface — enabling integrations, data syncing, and platform extensibility at scale.

We’re at an inflection point. Historically, our APIs have been treated as secondary. We are now investing to make them primary — reliable, consistent, and delightful to build against. This is a high-visibility effort with executive attention and meaningful product partnership.

About the Role

We are hiring a Staff Software Engineer to lead the modernization and strategic evolution of HubSpot’s public API platform.

This is not an incremental optimization role. This is an opportunity where you'll be redefining API standards, improving developer trust, and driving broad, high-impact change across a large and complex surface area.

You will work autonomously on exceptionally complex problems that span API design, scalability, data consistency, integration boundaries, and long-term architectural direction — while partnering closely with Product and Engineering leadership.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will:

• Own the technical direction for HubSpot’s public APIs, setting standards for contract design, versioning, and developer experience.
• Design and ship new APIs while refactoring legacy APIs into simple, consistent, and stable interfaces.
• Lead large, cross-cutting improvements that prioritize usability, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Build and operate high-volume, scalable data APIs supporting significant read and write workloads.
• Architect systems that safely synchronize and connect multiple distributed systems with clear, stable contracts.
• Reduce technical complexity and modernize legacy patterns to create durable, adoptable solutions.
• Act as a force multiplier by mentoring engineers, influencing cross-team technical decisions, and raising the API craftsmanship bar across the organization.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to shape API strategy and execution sequencing.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to enhance productivity and code quality while maintaining strong engineering standards.
• Model HubSpot’s Engineering Leadership Mission and consistently operate at Staff-level reliability expectations.

What We’re Looking For

We define Staff Engineers as highly productive, deeply impactful engineers who work autonomously on complex challenges and help set technical direction across their product group.

For this role, you bring:

• Significant experience designing and owning public APIs used by external developers (not just internal services).
• A strong point of view on API contracts — including versioning, backward compatibility, clarity, and developer ergonomics.
• Experience building and scaling high-volume read/write data APIs with strong reliability and performance characteristics.
• Experience in systems integration or data synchronization, creating stable contracts across distributed systems.
• A track record of delivering large, high-impact technical changes — not just optimizing components, but redefining patterns and standards.
• Demonstrated cross-team influence: mentoring engineers, driving adoption of best practices, and shaping technical direction beyond your immediate team.
• Deep reliability mindset: designing fault-tolerant systems, simplifying complexity, and improving operational outcomes.
• Typically 10+ years of industry experience (not required, but common at this level).

Why This Role Is Unique

• High leverage impact: You will influence the API surface that powers the majority of integrations and external platform development at HubSpot.
• Strategic shift moment: This role is part of a deliberate move to make APIs a primary product offering — not an afterthought.
• Platform-wide influence: The standards and patterns you define will shape both external and, over time, internal APIs.
• Rare scope at Staff level: You’ll combine hands-on architectural leadership, deep API craftsmanship, and cross-organizational influence in one of the most foundational layers of the product.