Seeking a Staff Software Engineer to enhance Apollo's front-end tools, improve developer experience, and lead architectural initiatives across teams.
At Apollo GraphQL, we’re transforming the way developers build software with the power of the graph. Our Graph Tooling Team sits at the heart of this mission - owning and advancing the developer-facing tools that help teams onboard quickly, work intuitively, and build with joy.
We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer with deep front-end expertise impacting multiple teams to help lead the next chapter of both our internal and external developer experience journey. This is an opportunity to rearchitect our MFE to remove internal developer bottlenecks and improve deployment velocity, as well as shape customer-facing tools like Apollo Studio, Sandbox, and IDE extensions while exploring the future of AI-assisted development workflows.
About the Team
The Graph Tooling Team owns Apollo’s core developer tooling platform—including the Studio web app, IDE plugins (VS Code, IntelliJ), and Sandbox tools. Our mission is simple: delight developers. We build tools that reduce friction, visualize complex GraphQL workflows, and make it easy for teams to get started and grow with Apollo.
What You'll Do
- Architect a front-end platform-as-a-service used across Apollo’s tools, which includes defining application boundaries, runtime integration, deployment strategy as well as routing and navigation.
- Enhance our React component infrastructure for greater performance and scalability
- Build a robust testing infrastructure and component libraries for improved discovery and reusability.
- Improve UI/UX design for observability and schema workflows
- Develop new interfaces and features used by thousands of developers
- Create intuitive UIs for local testing and GraphQL exploration
- Design and build browser plugins and debuggers for GraphQL troubleshooting
- Implement design system standards to ensure visual and functional consistency
- Explore and implement AI-enabled developer workflows through tooling
Who You Are
- Deep expertise in React and modern front-end development
- Strong background in web application architecture, component design, and performance optimization
- Solid understanding of UI/UX principles, especially in technical products
- Experience building and maintaining a robust testing infrastructure
- Experience in SaaS or developer tooling environments
- Deep understanding of different micro-frontend orchestration patterns (Module Federation, single-spa, independent deployments) with hands-on experience architecting and implementing MFE solutions for multiple autonomous teams, including shared infrastructure, deployment strategies, and cross-team coordination
- Experience leading technical initiatives, mentoring junior/mid-level engineers, and driving engineering best practices across teams
- Ability to work across multiple teams, influence technical decisions, and align engineering efforts with business objectives
- Experience designing large-scale frontend systems, making architectural trade-offs, and planning for scalability and maintainability
- Ability to contribute to technical roadmaps, evaluate emerging technologies, and make decisions that impact multiple teams or the entire organization
- Experience with production debugging, performance troubleshooting, and leading incident response for complex frontend systems
Bonus Points
- Experience with IDE extensions, debugging tools, or platform front-ends
- Familiarity with GraphQL and developer-centric workflows
- Exposure to AI/ML-enhanced developer tools
At Apollo, we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation whilst ensuring consistency within the team in each country. We make hiring decisions based on your skills, experience, and our overall assessment of what we learned during the hiring process. In addition to the U.S. base salary range, we also provide equity and benefits.
Apollo offers all U.S. employees a choice of 3 Anthem Blue Cross medical plans and California residents can also choose from an additional 2 Kaiser medical plans. Dental and Vision benefits are provided by Sun Life Financial.
Location: This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere in the United States or Canada.
Equal Opportunity: Apollo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a talented and diverse workforce.
Privacy: California residents applying for positions at Apollo can see our privacy policy here.
E-Verify: Apollo is an E-Verify employer and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. For more information please visit E-Verify.
Top Skills
Front-End Development
GraphQL
Ide Extensions
JavaScript
React
Web Application Architecture
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