Role Description

The Developer Infrastructure team at Dropbox builds and maintains the foundational systems that enable our engineers to deliver innovative features and services to millions of users worldwide. You will be at the heart of architecting and advancing the critical tools and infrastructure that accelerate engineering excellence across the company.

The Developer Infrastructure team at Dropbox is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead initiatives at the intersection of developer productivity and AI. In this role, you’ll architect and drive large-scale infrastructure that empowers ~1,000 engineers to build and ship software faster, safer, and with higher quality. You’ll focus on reducing friction across the software development lifecycle—improving build/test systems, streamlining workflows, and integrating AI-powered tools for code reviews, debugging, and documentation. As a technical leader, you’ll set strategy, mentor engineering leaders across multiple sub-teams, and partner closely with application engineers and cross-functional stakeholders. This is a highly visible, company-wide impact role with direct S-team exposure, ideal for someone who thrives on solving complex infrastructure challenges at scale while shaping the future of AI-driven developer productivity.
This is a high-impact role with strong visibility, ideal for someone who enjoys building foundational systems, experimenting with new technologies, and helping engineers do their best work.

Join us in redefining the future, where your passion for building scalable, reliable systems will drive meaningful change on a global scale.

Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.

Responsibilities

  • Define and drive technical strategy for developer infrastructure, with a focus on improving productivity and velocity across ~1,000 engineers.
  • Architect and build large-scale backend systems that support the full software development lifecycle in a complex monorepo environment.
  • Leverage AI-powered tools to automate and enhance workflows including code reviews, testing, debugging, and documentation.
  • Evaluate, pilot, and integrate emerging AI and developer productivity technologies into Dropbox’s engineering ecosystem.
  • Set and track measurable success metrics (e.g., velocity improvements, reduced toil, faster build/test cycles) to guide roadmap and measure impact.
  • Mentor and uplevel technical leaders across Dev Infra, fostering a culture of reliability, customer empathy, and data-driven decision-making.
  • Collaborate closely with application engineering teams, AI Tools team, and cross-functional stakeholders to identify bottlenecks and deliver impactful solutions.
  • Promote best practices for reliability, scalability, and observability in developer infrastructure and AI-enhanced tooling.
  • Represent Dropbox externally by engaging in the developer productivity and infrastructure community through talks, conferences, and peer collaboration.

Many teams at Dropbox run Services with on-call rotations, which entails being available for calls during both core and non-core business hours. If a team has an on-call rotation, all engineers on the team are expected to participate in the rotation as part of their employment. Applicants are encouraged to ask for more details of the rotations to which the applicant is applying.

Requirements

  • 10+ years of professional software development experience
  • BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics), or equivalent technical experience
  • Proficient in programming and debugging across a range of languages such as Python, Go, C/C++, or Java
  • Experience designing and building internal tools, developer platforms, or productivity systems that scale across large engineering organizations
  • Comfortable operating in ambiguity and fast-changing environments; proactively brings clarity, structure, and direction when faced with uncertainty
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a proven ability to gather feedback, influence cross-functional stakeholders, and work directly with engineers to iterate on solutions
  • Proven track record of defining & delivering well-scoped milestones/projects
  • Ability to independently define right solutions for ambiguous, open-ended problems

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience in Developer Infrastructure
  • Experience with monorepo scale
  • Experience with both going broad and deep to set strategy or dive into difficult technical issues
  • Familiarity with modern AI-powered developer tools, frameworks, and APIs.
  • Experience driving initiatives in the developer productivity space

Compensation

US Zone 1

This role is not available in Zone 1

US Zone 2
$216,500—$292,900 USD
US Zone 3
$192,400—$260,400 USD

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