Staff Software Engineer, Dev Environments

Staff Software Engineer, Dev Environments Overview

This role sits in the Dev Environments team within DoorDash’s Foundations group, which is part of Platform Engineering. The team is responsible for the local and remote developer experience across the DoorDash group of companies, supporting more than 5,000 engineers. Its purpose is to improve engineering speed, quality, and efficiency at very large scale by removing friction from everyday development work, from starting an environment and getting code to build, to receiving feedback quickly, whether the user is a person or an AI agent.

As a Staff Software Engineer in this area, you would be expected to operate as a recognised expert in developer environments. The work spans local and remote development flows, dev containers, IDE and remote backend systems, and the way these pieces connect end to end. The role also carries accountability for outcomes that cut across several teams. You would help define the technical direction for the roadmap, solve deep technical issues that other engineers cannot resolve alone, and provide mentorship to senior and mid-level engineers. You would also work closely with engineering leadership across the wider organisation to turn broad, ambiguous developer-experience challenges into a clear and ordered technical strategy.

What you would do

• Shape the architecture for how thousands of engineers across DoorDash, Wolt, and Deliveroo develop and deliver software, covering local and remote dev containers, remote IDE and VM lifecycles, and the complete path from local setup to remote execution.
• Build developer tooling for a large monorepo environment and help establish the standard backend as the companies under DoorDash’s umbrella move toward a shared global platform.
• Create production-like environments in seconds, keep state synchronized over the network, and make remote machines behave like local ones in a dependable and cost-efficient way at very high concurrency.
• Work on problems that are not already solved elsewhere in the industry, balancing invention with adoption where appropriate.
• Design environments with AI agents as first-class users, including sandboxes that can be created on demand, run in parallel, and safely operate on real repositories.
• Support agent-driven workflows from multiple surfaces, including IDEs, command-line tools, and Slack, with the goal of enabling review and shipping without needing a laptop.
• Bring together teams that do not naturally work together, such as Security, Infrastructure, and Product Engineering, to solve unclear platform problems that lack an existing playbook.
• Mentor engineers at different levels through design reviews, code review, pairing, and architectural guidance when needed.
• Help improve hiring quality by leading interview loops, calibrating candidates, and supporting the onboarding of senior hires.

What you need to succeed

• A strong history of shipping production systems and leading cross-team work with impact at group level, including ownership from initial design through production rollout and adoption.
• Practical fluency with developer-tooling languages and technologies such as Go, Python, and TypeScript, along with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.
• Experience running compute on Kubernetes, including multi-tenant isolation, autoscaling ephemeral workloads, and cost management, or experience with lightweight VM or sandbox technologies such as Firecracker.
• Working knowledge of cloud networking, including secure and efficient traffic routing across network boundaries using tools such as VPNs and service meshes.
• Experience bringing LLM or AI tooling into developer workflows in both local and remote settings, with examples such as Claude Code.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and align several teams without formal authority.
• Experience building close relationships with the engineering teams that consume your platform, not only with the platform team itself.
• Helpful background in developer platforms or related infrastructure, including devcontainers, remote development, remote IDE backends, or developer workstation tooling.
• Additional advantage if you have worked with JetBrains remote-backend flows, Codespaces or Codeserver-style products, or similar systems.
• Additional advantage if you have experience with remote build and execution systems such as BuildBuddy or with large-scale build caching.

Why this role may appeal to you

Deliveroo describes the work as meaningful and high impact, because it is tied to a complex, always-on marketplace that affects millions of people every day. The environment is intended to be one where ideas can be shipped, tested, and improved quickly, with a high degree of ownership and relatively little hierarchy. The company also emphasizes the opportunity to take on large, ambiguous problems, grow through responsibility, and work in a culture that values strong standards, collaboration, flexible working, and continuous learning.

The role also offers the chance to contribute to a business that is now part of DoorDash, which brings together teams with broader reach, scale, and ambition. Depending on the role, collaboration may extend across DoorDash and Wolt as part of one global team.

Interview and hiring process

The company says it aims to run a fair process that allows candidates’ skills to come through clearly. The interview process for this role typically has three to four stages. Candidates are encouraged to review the Engineering Interview Guide to prepare for the process.

Benefits and rewards

• Competitive compensation and a broad benefits package.
• Possible annual cash bonus, sign-on bonus, or relocation support depending on the role and location.
• Up to 5% matched pension contributions.
• Equity or share awards may be available for some roles.
• Free Deliveroo Plus, which includes free delivery and special offers.
• Team lunches from highly rated local restaurants.
• 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, with more holiday added the longer you stay.
• One paid day each year to volunteer for a registered charity.
• Employer-funded single-cover healthcare on the core plan, with the option to add family members at the employee’s cost.
• On-site gym access at headquarters and discounted membership at external gyms.
• Access to wellbeing apps through GymPass, including LesMills+, Strava, Headspace, and Yogaia.
• Discounted dental cover and other flexible benefits such as critical illness cover, partner life cover, travel insurance, and health assessments.
• Life assurance.
• Parental leave benefits including maternity, paternity, maternity shared parental leave, available from day one.
• Good equipment for working from home and a parent-friendly working culture.
• Free mortgage advice.
• Cycle to Work Scheme or Season Ticket Loans, depending on how you travel.
• Learning and development support, including access to the RooLearn training platform.
• Regular employee resource group events such as dinners, dance lessons, and in-office yoga sessions.
• Summer and end-of-year parties.

Additional information

Deliveroo states that it is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion, or belief. If you have a disability or long-term health condition and need support with your application or reasonable adjustments during recruitment, you can let the company know after submitting your application.

The role is based in London at The River Building HQ. The page also references flexible working and support for working from home, but it does not describe the position as fully remote.

Degree Requirement: Not Specified

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