Staff Fullstack Software Engineer, Dropbox

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics) or equivalent technical experience
• Minimum of 12 years of experience as a software engineer with 3+ years serving as a Senior
• Demonstrated, hands-on experience driving measurable performance improvements in production web applications — including profiling JavaScript and React surfaces, identifying root causes through flame graphs, heat maps, traces, and RUM data, and shipping the fixes that moved the metric
• Demonstrated experience using AI tooling to accelerate performance work — applying LLMs and AI-assisted workflows to profiling analysis, root-cause investigation, refactoring, or shipping performance fixes
• Experience optimizing AI-assisted engineering workflows to improve the productivity of other engineers — selecting tools, defining patterns and guardrails, and measuring the impact on engineering throughput
• Production experience with modern backend services in Python or Go that support consumer-facing client surfaces
• Experience leading technical strategy on cross-cutting initiatives spanning multiple teams or surfaces, including writing design docs, defining architecture, and driving execution to measurable outcomes
• Has worked on a consumer user-facing product (versus a platform team or developer-facing API-based product), and shipped changes that moved customer-visible metrics
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of influencing roadmaps and decisions outside their direct reporting line — including leading initiatives that depend on coordinating with platform owners they don't directly manage

Desirable

• As a Staff Software Engineer at Dropbox, you'll be the singular technical owner of application performance across the Core org — the part of Dropbox that owns every consumer-facing surface: web, iOS, Android, and desktop
• This is one of the company's most visible, cross-cutting technical challenges. Your mandate is to make Dropbox feel fast on every surface our customers use
• You'll operate at the intersection of measurement, engineering, and product impact, owning ambiguous problems that span the entire stack and translate directly into business outcomes for hundreds of millions of users
• There is no existing performance team at Dropbox — you'll define the discipline. You'll start with the web, profiling our highest-traffic React surfaces, producing flame graphs and heat maps, identifying the most valuable opportunities, and driving fixes through to shipped, measured wins
• The web is your initial focus and the surface where you'll be most hands-on. From there, you'll lead the performance initiative across iOS, Android, and desktop by partnering with the internal platform experts who own those clients — coordinating strategy, transferring measurement practices, and driving the work, rather than building everything yourself
• You'll also work across the Python and Go backend services that all of these surfaces depend on, since perceived performance rarely lives in one layer
• Your influence will extend across Core Engineering. You'll define the measurement standards, regression-detection systems, and performance practices that other engineers rely on
• You'll also be expected to use AI fluently in your own engineering work and to lead the optimization of AI-assisted workflows across Core, raising the productivity of every engineer around you
• You'll bring clarity where there is uncertainty, raise the bar for engineering excellence through hands-on leadership, and shape how Dropbox thinks about performance for years to come
• In return, you'll gain meaningful exposure to senior leadership, build foundational systems that unlock future product capabilities, and grow into an org-level technical strategist — helping advance Dropbox's mission to create a more enlightened way of working
• Drive performance improvement on the Dropbox web application as the first focus of the role — profiling React surfaces, producing flame graphs and heat maps, identifying the highest-impact opportunities, and shipping measurable improvements
• Lead the performance initiative across iOS, Android, and desktop by coordinating with internal platform experts who own those clients — setting strategy, defining measurement standards, and driving execution rather than implementing every fix personally
• Take performance improvements end-to-end: from measurement, to root-cause analysis, to shipped code changes, to validation in production telemetry
• Build and own the measurement, instrumentation, and regression-detection systems that engineering teams across Core depend on to ship performant code
• Write production code regularly — primarily JavaScript and React on the web, with backend work in Python and Go on the services those surfaces depend on
• Set engineering standards for performance work across Core Engineering, and mentor IC3 and IC4 engineers on profiling, measurement methodology, and performance-aware system design
• Apply AI tooling to performance work and lead the optimization of AI-assisted engineering workflows across Core, raising engineering throughput and shaping how Dropbox engineers use AI to ship better software faster
• Influence cross-org roadmaps and architectural decisions, partnering with engineering leaders, PMs, and designers to ensure performance is treated as a first-class product attribute