[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Axios

Role Description

Axios is a growth-focused media company helping people get smarter, faster, on what matters. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer—a senior, hands-on individual contributor—to lead architecture and delivery for Axios’ core products across multiple teams using strong product-engineering and AI-native practices.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll lead reliable product and platform work across Axios’ frontend and backend systems. You’ll remain hands-on while driving multi-quarter initiatives, improving technical coherence, and using agentic practices to accelerate delivery. Key responsibilities include:

• Cross-team technical leadership: Lead mission-critical or high-risk initiatives spanning teams and connected systems. Frame problems, align ownership and dependencies, make tradeoffs explicit, and drive production adoption.
• Architecture and design: Own architecture for a product area and scalable boundaries across frontend, APIs, data, and production systems. Lead design reviews and establish standards within your sphere of influence.
• Hands-on system ownership: Own the technical direction and long-term evolution of key systems while writing and reviewing code, prototyping, debugging, leading migrations, and operating services in production.
• AI-enabled product and engineering: Identify where models, agents, retrieval, or automation create value. Build reusable capabilities with measurable behavior, guardrails, and judgment about when conventional software is better.
• Quality, reliability, and incident leadership: Improve testing, performance, observability, security, and operational readiness. Anticipate systemic risks, address technical debt, and help lead resolution and learning during critical production issues.
• Technical leadership and mentorship: Mentor mid- and senior-level engineers across teams, spread systems thinking and design patterns, and build alignment through proposals, reviews, and influence without authority.
• Product and technical strategy: Partner with product, design, and engineering leaders to shape the product-area roadmap, align dependencies, and connect technical investment to reader, editorial, and business outcomes.

Qualifications

• Typically 7+ years in professional software development, or equivalent sustained Staff-level impact, including leading complex initiatives across multiple teams or systems.
• Hands-on experience using agentic coding tools—such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or comparable tools—to complete meaningful, multi-step software work.
• Ability to write clear strategies, specifications, and acceptance criteria; provide context; scope complex work; decide what to delegate; and redirect incomplete or incorrect approaches.
• Ability to review AI-generated code critically, validate assumptions, identify security, scalability, and maintainability risks, and catch plausible but wrong solutions.
• Hands-on experience building production interfaces with JavaScript or TypeScript and React, preferably with Next.js.
• Hands-on experience building production services and APIs. Our backend systems use Go and Python.
• Experience with relational databases, SQL, schema design, transactions, and migrations.
• Experience with testing, accessibility, input validation, authentication, authorization, and web security practices.
• Ability to operate independently in ambiguity, identify high-leverage problems, align teams, make sound tradeoffs, and connect decisions to product and business goals.
• Ability to build alignment through clear proposals and reasoning, communicate risks and tradeoffs across functions, and drive clarity during disagreement.
• Curiosity about changing models, tools, and practices, paired with an evidence-based approach.

Requirements

• Experience building production AI-enabled features using model APIs, structured outputs, tool or function calling, retrieval, or agent workflows.
• Experience evaluating and operating AI-enabled systems through regression tests, evaluation harnesses, tracing, feedback loops, model or prompt versioning, cost and latency monitoring, or human-review paths.
• Experience extending AI development environments through MCP servers, agent tools, repository instructions, reusable skills or plugins, custom workflows, or automated code review.
• Led a multi-team architecture, platform, migration, or modernization initiative from problem framing through production adoption.
• Owned critical systems through incidents, scaling challenges, and long-term architectural evolution.
• Drove adoption of technical standards, reusable tools, or platform capabilities across multiple teams.
• Mentored experienced engineers and helped improve technical judgment beyond your immediate team.
• Experience with CMS, publishing, media, subscription, search, or other consumer-facing products.
• Production experience with Go or Python and distributed systems using gRPC, cloud infrastructure, containers, queues, CI/CD, or similar technologies.

Benefits

• 401(k) with employer match
• Robust PPO and High Deductible health insurance options on the Blue Cross Blue Shield network
• Employer Health Savings Account (HSA) contribution for the high deductible health plan option
• Dental and vision coverage
• Primary caregiver 12-week paid leave
• Birth-givers will have an additional 6-8 weeks depending on type of delivery, for a total of 18-20 weeks continuous leave
• Generous vacation policy, plus holidays
• One mental health day per quarter
• Annual learning and development stipend
• $100 monthly work-from-home stipend
• Tele-mental health services through Headspace
• OneMedical membership, including tele-health services
• Personal health advocacy resources through HealthAdvocate
• Inclusive fertility, hormonal health and family forming benefits through Carrot Fertility
• Access to the Axios “Family Fund”, which was created to allow employees to request financial support when facing financial hardship or emergencies
• Increased work flexibility for parents and caretakers
• Virtual company-sponsored social events
• A strong and positive work environment
• A commitment to an open, inclusive, and diverse work culture