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# Senior Software Engineer, GraphQL Platform

- **Company:** New York Times
- **Location:** New York, NY, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $162,000 - $195,000
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Software Quality, Performance Tuning, Release Management, Software Engineering, Network Routers, Caching, Backend, Kubernetes, Graphql, Api Design
- **Published:** November 6, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.juju.com/job/1_nytimes2-4750599005

## About the Role

+ You have 5+ years of software development experience with a focus on API development.
 + You have expertise developing and scaling GraphQL APIs in production, with practical knowledge of federation principles (Apollo or similar).
 + Your background includes at least one statically typed backend language (we use Go).
 + You are familiar with automation for code quality, release management, and developer workflow improvements.
 + You have experience delivering projects from design to implementation, testing and documentation.
 + You value learning and improvement, sharing knowledge, and welcoming constructive feedback.
Preferred Qualifications:

 + Background working with Apollo GraphQL (Router, Federation, schema design, plugins/extensions).
 + Knowledge of performance optimization for APIs under high traffic, CDN integration, caching, and multi-region operations.
 + Experience troubleshooting and improving observability for a platform distributed across multiple systems.
 + Experience deploying and maintaining applications on Kubernetes.
This is a hybrid role based in our NYC headquarters.

## Description

The Samizdat team manages the New York Times' GraphQL platform.
Our mission is to provide a API layer powering our products and internal systems.
We are in an exciting period of modernization, driving scale and reliability as our upstream data complexity grows.
We are looking for a GraphQL and Developer Experience enthusiast to join our team and contribute to our mission-critical distributed platform.
Responsibilities

 + Develop new platform offerings while ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of our GraphQL platform as it continues to grow.
 + Lead by example in establishing and enforcing GraphQL schema design and governance best practices, participating in platform-wide schema working groups, and reviewing/mentoring cross-team contributions.
 + Contribute to the platform's automation, developer tooling, and onboarding/kick-off guides for service adopters and subgraph contributors.
 + Support on-call, incident response, and troubleshooting efforts for platform-level escalations.
 + Mentor team members, promoting technical excellence and a culture of respect and constructive feedback.
 + Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence (https://www.nytco.com/company/mission-and-values/) and a commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.
 + You will report to the Senior Software Engineering Manager.