Role Description

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.

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

• 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

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

• 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

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience profiling and improving native iOS applications (Swift), including startup time, scroll performance, and memory behavior
• Experience profiling and improving native Android applications (Kotlin), including startup time, scroll performance, and memory behavior
• Experience profiling and improving desktop client applications, including startup, IPC, and resource usage
• Experience building or owning performance regression-detection systems integrated into CI/CD
• Experience with RUM telemetry pipelines, sampling strategy, and statistically rigorous comparison of performance data
• Track record of mentoring senior engineers (Senior and above) and raising the technical bar across an engineering organization

Compensation

US Zone 1

$248,200—$335,800 USD

US Zone 2

$223,400—$302,200 USD

US Zone 3

$198,600—$268,600 USD

• US Zone 1: San Francisco metro, New York City metro, or Seattle metro
• US Zone 2: California (outside SF metro), Colorado, Connecticut (outside NYC metro), Delaware, Illinois (Chicago metro), Indiana (Chicago metro), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Chicago metro), New Hampshire, New Jersey (outside NYC metro), New York (outside NYC metro), Oregon, Pennsylvania (D.C. metro), Pennsylvania (outside NYC metro), Texas (Austin metro) Virginia (DC metro), Washington (outside Seattle metro), Washington DC metro, West Virginia (DC metro), Wisconsin (Chicago metro)
• US Zone 3: All other US locations

Dropbox is a Virtual First company and is open to hiring candidates in all authorized locations.

Company Description

Dropbox isn’t just a workplace—it’s a living lab for designing a more enlightened way of working. We’re a global community of bold visionaries and resourceful doers shaping the future of Dropbox and, in turn, the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines the autonomy of a distributed workplace with the power of human connection, creating space for meaningful work and lasting relationships. With a startup mindset and enterprise-level opportunities, we expect Dropbox employees to think critically, stay curious, and use modern tools, including AI, to improve how work gets done. Here, you can be who you are and grow into who you’re meant to be. You own your impact, helping make work more intuitive, joyful, and human for yourself and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If you’re ready to push boundaries and challenge yourself, Dropbox is ready for you.

Team Description

The Dropbox Engineering Team develops the technology, platforms, and products that create more enlightened ways of working for hundreds of millions of people. Customers rely on Dropbox to manage, share, and collaborate on content seamlessly—our engineering makes that easier and more intuitive than ever before.Our platform features a robust systems software layer that stores and processes exabytes of data, and a suite of growing services that enhance core products like our sharing and sync engine. We’re also driving innovation with new offerings such as Dash, our AI-powered knowledge management engine. Our infrastructure spans high-performance servers and cutting-edge components across multiple data centers worldwide, ensuring reliability, speed, and scalability at a global scale. We think like a startup but build for an enterprise, exploring new possibilities that transform how people work. If you're excited about turning complex technical challenges into intuitive solutions at scale, join our Engineering team.

Virtual First

Dropbox’s Virtual First way of working is designed to help people do their best work with flexibility, autonomy, and connection. Day to day, teams work remotely with nonlinear schedules and core collaboration hours that support deep focus and individual working styles. We prioritize asynchronous communication to improve clarity, respect deep work time, and reduce unnecessary meetings. While remote work is the primary experience for our employees, we also prioritize intentional, in-person connection. We bring teams together through regular team gatherings, on-demand workspaces, and Dropbox Neighborhood events in order to strengthen team cohesion, foster creativity, and enhance momentum. Virtual First is built to provide the same access to opportunity, growth, and impact for everyone, regardless of location.

This role requires travel to offsites and various other team gatherings (approximately 5-10% of the year or 2-3 days per quarter). We provide advance notice when possible and encourage candidates to discuss any accommodation needs during the interview process.

Dropbox supports responsible use of AI for preparation, but misrepresentation of skills or experience is not permitted. See our AI Principles.

Dropbox is an equal opportunity employer. We are a welcoming place for everyone, and we do our best to make sure all people feel supported and connected at work.