Staff Software Engineer, Social Graph

Want to help us help others? We’re hiring! 

GoFundMe is the world’s most powerful community for good, dedicated to helping people help each other. By uniting individuals and nonprofits in one place, GoFundMe makes it easy and safe for people to ask for help and support causes—for themselves and each other. Together, our community has raised more than $40 billion since 2010.

Join us! We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer with deep expertise in graph theory, graph-based systems, and large-scale social graph infrastructure. In this role, you will serve as a technical leader driving the architecture, implementation, and scaling of our social graph platform—powering trust, recommendations, user discovery, and other core product experiences.

You will collaborate closely with Data Science, ML, Product, and Infrastructure teams to design graph representations, build ingestion and transformation pipelines, and deploy graph-backed models at massive scale. You will set technical direction for how we leverage connectivity, influence, and reputation signals to improve safety, personalization, and engagement across our ecosystem.

This is a hybrid role that requires 3 days per week at the office, and we are therefore only able to consider candidates who are located or willing to relocate to San Francisco, CA.

The Role

• Serve as the technical lead for initiatives related to social graph modeling, storage, retrieval, and computation.
• Architect and scale graph databases and graph query systems capable of supporting billions of nodes and edges with low-latency performance.
• Design and ship pipelines for ingesting, cleaning, and transforming social and behavioral data into graph structures.
• Partner with ML teams to productionize graph-based features, including embeddings, similarity signals, trust metrics, and GNN-powered ranking features.
• Lead the development of graph-informed recommendation, trust, and safety systems, ensuring models reflect real-world connectivity patterns.
• Define and implement feature engineering strategies leveraging graph topology (e.g., mutual connections, influence scoring, community structure).
• Contribute to architecture decisions related to streaming systems (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming) and real-time graph updates.
• Mentor engineers and guide best practices on graph design, distributed systems, feature computation, and ML integration.
• Collaborate with Product to translate graph capabilities into business-impacting features that drive trust, engagement, and discovery.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, observability, and data quality in all graph-related systems.

You

• 8+ years of industry experience, including significant experience at senior / staff / principal levels.
• Demonstrated expertise launching and scaling graph-based applications in production.
• Deep understanding of graph theory, graph algorithms (e.g., traversal, clustering, centrality), and modern graph data structures.
• Expert-level experience with graph databases (Neo4j, TigerGraph, JanusGraph, DGL-backed systems, etc.) and efficient graph querying.
• Proven ability to design high-scale pipelines for ingesting and transforming social or behavioral data.
• Experience with distributed streaming frameworks (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming).
• Hands-on experience incorporating graph-derived features into recommendation, ranking, trust, or safety models.
• Familiarity with Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), graph embeddings, or graph-based ranking systems.
• Strong product intuition and ability to articulate how graph systems drive business outcomes.
• Ability to influence architectural direction and mentor teams.

Preferred 

• Experience supporting real-time or near-real-time graph updates.
• Background in large social networks, marketplaces, trust & safety, or other graph-heavy domains.
• Track record of cross-functional technical leadership.
• Publications, patents, or open-source contributions in graph algorithms, GNNs, or infrastructure.

Why you’ll love it here

• Make an Impact: Be part of a mission-driven organization making a positive difference in millions of lives every year.
• Innovative Environment: Work with a diverse, passionate, and talented team in a fast-paced, forward-thinking atmosphere.
• Collaborative Team: Join a fun and collaborative team that works hard and celebrates success together.
• Competitive Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay and comprehensive healthcare benefits.
• Holistic Support: Enjoy financial assistance for things like hybrid work, family planning, along with generous parental leave, flexible time-off policies, and mental health and wellness resources to support your overall well-being.
• Growth Opportunities: Participate in learning, development, and recognition programs to help you thrive and grow.
• Commitment to DEI: Contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through ongoing initiatives and employee resource groups.
• Community Engagement: Make a difference through our volunteering program.

We live by our core values: impatient to be great, find a way, earn trust every day, fueled by purpose. Be a part of something bigger with us!

GoFundMe is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that actively pursues candidates of diverse backgrounds and experiences.  We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, nationality or national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, marital status, age, medical condition, mental or physical disability, or military or veteran status.

The annual U.S. salary range for this full-time position is $181,000 - $271,000. The company also offers equity and other benefits to employees, including healthcare, dental, vision, life insurance and 401(k) saving program. In addition to this wage, there are geolocation differentials that will increase pay depending on the work location. Additionally pay may vary depending on other factors including skills, experience, education, or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific total compensation package based on your location during the hiring process.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete a job application or a job interview or to otherwise participate in the hiring process, please contact us at [email protected]. 

Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates and Applicants:

Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or certain US privacy laws may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. 

Learn more about GoFundMe:

We’re proud to partner with GoFundMe.org, an independent public charity, to extend the reach and impact of our generous community, while helping drive critical social change. You can learn more about GoFundMe.org’s activities and impact in their FY ‘25 annual report.

Our annual “Year in Help” report reflects our community’s impact in advancing our mission of helping people help each other.

For recent company news and announcements, visit our Newsroom.