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Staff Server Engineer, Trust & Safety

San Francisco, CA

About This Role

Strava is the app for active people. With over 150 million athletes in more than 185 countries, Strava is where connection, motivation, and personal bests thrive. No matter your activity, gear, or goals, we help you find your crew, crush your milestones, and keep moving forward. Start your journey with Strava today.

Our mission is simple: to motivate people to live their best active lives. We believe in the power of movement to connect and drive people forward.

We’re seeking a Staff Server Engineer to join our Trust and Safety engineering team.

This team builds the tools, systems, and features that protect the integrity of our platform and ensure a safe, trusted experience for our global community. In this role, your work will have a direct and lasting impact, shaping the foundations and roadmap of a platform where people can connect, share and thrive with confidence. As a staff engineer, you would be collaborating with AI/ML team to support AI-driven infrastructure for Trust and Safety.

We follow a flexible hybrid model that generally translates to around half your time on-site in our San Francisco —roughly three days per week.

What You’ll Do:

  • Develop core Trust and Safety capabilities, such as user reporting and content moderation, content and behavior detection, and abuse prevention systems.
  • Deliver back-end services in large, reliable, and scalable distributed systems.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional partners such as product, design, analytics, and operations to deliver impactful and scalable solutions.
  • Provide technical leadership and mentor engineers within a collaborative, supportive team.
  • Using your in-depth knowledge of software to help drive technical conversations with peers from different backgrounds, across different teams.
  • Contribute to a close-knit community in a flexible, hybrid work environment.
  • Partner with Engineering Managers and other Senior IC’s to define the technical vision for a team and implement that vision.

You Will Be Successful Here By:

  • Mentoring other engineers, fostering a culture of continuous growth and development.
  • Upleveling the organization by writing blog posts and giving tech talks about your work
  • Working closely with product managers, legal teams, and other engineering teams to understand requirements and translate them into technical solutions.
  • Partnering with multiple adjacent areas: AI/ML, cybersecurity and other product teams

What You’ll Bring to the Team:

  • Proven experience building services in a production environment, using languages like Ruby, Java, Scala, Python, Go, or similar.
  • Strong knowledge of relational or NoSQL databases for production, such as MySQL, Redis, or Cassandra.
  • Familiarity with open-source distributed systems technologies, such as Kafka, Finagle, Kubernetes, and Docker.
  • You have Experience in Trust and Safety domain and are passionate about developing Trust and Safety systems and infrastructure.
  • You are an SME (Subject Matter Expert) on abuse detection and mitigation, and enjoy staying up-to-date on emerging threats and security technologies.

Compensation Overview:

At Strava, we know our employees are the most important ingredient to our success, and our compensation and total rewards programs reflect that. We take a market-based approach to pay, and pay may vary depending on the department and your location. Salary ranges are categorized into one of three tiers based on a cost of labor index for that geographic area. We will determine the candidate’s starting pay based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. We may modify these ranges in the future. For more information, please contact your talent partner.

Compensation: $230,000 - $250,000.  This range reflects base compensation only and does not include equity or benefits. Your recruiter can share more details about the full compensation package, including the range specific to your location, during the hiring process.

For more information on benefits, please click here.

Why Join Us?

Movement brings us together. At Strava, we’re building the world’s largest community of active people, helping them stay motivated and achieve their goals.

Our global team is passionate about making movement fun, meaningful, and accessible to everyone. Whether you’re shaping the technology, growing our community, or driving innovation, your work at Strava makes an impact.

When you join Strava, you’re not just joining a company—you’re joining a movement. If you’re ready to bring your energy, ideas, and drive, let’s build something incredible together.

Strava builds software that makes the best part of our athletes’ days even better. Just as we’re deeply committed to unlocking their potential, we’re dedicated to providing a world-class, inclusive workplace where our employees can grow and thrive, too. We’re backed by Sequoia Capital, TCV, Madrone Partners and Jackson Square Ventures, and we’re expanding in order to exceed the needs of our growing community of global athletes. Our culture reflects our community. We are continuously striving to hire and engage teammates from all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives because we know we are a stronger team together.

Strava is an equal opportunity employer. In keeping with the values of Strava, we make all employment decisions including hiring, evaluation, termination, promotional and training opportunities, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical handicap, mental disability, medical condition, disability, gender or identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, marital status, height and/or weight.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

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