Staff Software Engineer - Fern
San Francisco, CAFull-time$250–310K/yrPosted 3w agoStill listed 5 days ago
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At a glance
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Job overview
Fern, a Postman company, builds API experiences for software companies. The Staff Software Engineer will build APIs, scale AI infrastructure, and design developer experiences. The role sets technical direction, improves system durability and scale, mentors engineers, and collaborates across product design and engineering. The team is based in New York City, while Postman roles in San Francisco hubs work in the office five days a week.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Qualifications
Benefits
Full job description
Who Are We?
Postman is the world’s leading API platform, used by more than 45 million+ developers and 500,000 organizations, including 98% of the Fortune 500. Postman is helping developers and professionals across the globe build the API-first world by simplifying each step of the API lifecycle and streamlining collaboration—enabling users to create better APIs, faster.
The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Boston, New York, Austin, Tokyo, London, and Bangalore - where Postman was founded. Postman is privately held, with funding from Battery Ventures, BOND, Coatue, CRV, Insight Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Learn more at postman.com or connect with Postman on X via @getpostman.
P.S: We highly recommend reading The "API-First World" graphic novel to understand the bigger picture and our vision at Postman.
About Fern, a Postman Company Fern helps software companies build a world-class API experience. Our customers include industry leaders like Nvidia, Square, and Twilio, as well as fast-growing AI companies like ElevenLabs and OpenRouter. In the next year, the majority of API integrations will be implemented by AI agents. Agents don’t read marketing pages. They need strongly typed schemas, structured endpoints, deterministic contracts, and documentation that can be fed into a context window. Our team is small and talent-dense. We’re a team of builders from Google, Palantir, Amazon, and Uber, working together in New York City. About the Role As a Staff Software Engineer at Fern, you’ll build APIs, scale AI infrastructure, and design developer experiences that reach millions of people.
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Set technical direction: Drive system design decisions around data modeling, performance, correctness, and reliability. Identify scaling bottlenecks before they become problems.
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Build for durability and scale: Ensure our systems are performant, observable, secure, and resilient under real-world production load across infrastructure (e.g., Vercel, AWS, Turbopuffer). Read about how we use Vercel and Next.js to achieve efficient multi-tenancy and faster development cycles.
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Mentor motivated engineers: Developing people is as important as developing software. From in-depth code reviews to high-level architectural discussions, you'll help elevate the skills and impact of those around you.
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Collaborate across the stack: Partner closely with product designers, backend, and frontend engineers working in TypeScript and Next.js to define polished interfaces and slick user experiences.
What We’re Looking For
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You have 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
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We’re building open source and we care deeply about taste — we’re looking for builders that know developer experience is a craft.
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Strong written and verbal communication skills to solve technical problems with customers.
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Bonus: Experience building with TypeScript.
The reasonably estimated base salary for this role ranges from $250,000.00 to $310,000.00, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.
What Else?
In addition to Postman's pay-on-performance philosophy, and a flexible schedule working with a fun, collaborative team, Postman offers a comprehensive set of benefits, including full medical coverage, flexible PTO, wellness reimbursement, and a monthly lunch stipend. Along with that, our wellness programs will help you stay in the best of your physical and mental health. Our frequent and fascinating team-building events will keep you connected, while our donation-matching program can support the causes you care about. We’re building a long-term company with an inclusive culture where everyone can be the best version of themselves.
At Postman we value in person collaboration. We are in office 5 days a week for all roles based out of our hubs in San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Austin, New York City, Tokyo and London. For roles based in Bangalore, employees currently work in the office three days a week and will transition to five days per week by the end of the year. We were thoughtful in our approach which is based on collaboration and grounded in feedback from our workforce, leadership team, and peers. The benefits of our in office model will be shared knowledge, brainstorming sessions, communication, and building trust in-person that cannot be replicated via zoom.
Our Values
At Postman, we create with the same curiosity that we see in our users. We value transparency and honest communication about not only successes, but also failures. In our work, we focus on specific goals that add up to a larger vision. Our inclusive work culture ensures that everyone is valued equally as important pieces of our final product. We are dedicated to delivering the best products we can.
Equal Opportunity
Postman is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status. Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. Postman does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Postman will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Postman.
How this job compares
Set against the 8,506 open Software Engineering jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 7, 2026.
- Pay
- This posting$250–310K/yr
- California median$190–276K/yr1,287 salary ranges
- US median$148–247K/yr6,361 salary ranges
This range's midpoint, $280K, is 22% above the California median midpoint ($230K) — in the top quarter of Software Engineering salary ranges in California.
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 1,770 open Software Engineering jobs in California and 8,506 across the US. 10% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
- Experience
- This posting asks for at least 8 years of experience; Software Engineering postings that state a minimum ask for 7 years at the median (6,499 postings).
- Education
- 2,191 of the 8,506 open Software Engineering jobs (26%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 7, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.
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