Engineering Lead - Backend

898496

Chirp Ecosystem Engineering Lead

We are in search of an Engineering Lead for the Chirp Ecosystem team. This is a hands-on role that oversees their own team where they write critical path code and provide technical and product leadership to the other teams they oversee.

What’s CHIRP?

CHIRP is HubSpot's internal, high-performance RPC framework that powers the company's distributed microservices architecture. Built on Apache Avro for schema evolution, backwards compatibility and type safety, CHIRP enables thousands of backend services to communicate efficiently across HubSpot's platform, handling billions of requests daily for core business logic including CRM operations, marketing automation, sales tools, and customer service workflows.

While the CHIRP protocol excels at backend service-to-service communication, it was designed for internal microservices - not for external consumption by web frontends, partner integrations, or emerging AI systems. This creates a critical gap: HubSpot's most valuable business logic is locked behind an internal protocol that can't directly serve the modern web, connect mobile applications, or AI tools.

What’s the remit of the Chirp Ecosystem team?

This team exists to solve this fundamental challenge. It is the infrastructure team that builds around and extends CHIRP, creating the gateway services, developer tools, state management tools for the frontend, and AI agent integrations that transform HubSpot's internal RPC framework into a platform that serves the entire product ecosystem.

What You'll Do

Core Engineering & Architecture

• Build and maintain high-performance infrastructure that bridges CHIRP's internal RPC framework to web frontends, Python services, and AI platforms

• Solve complex distributed systems challenges including protocol transformation, schema evolution, and intelligent routing across thousands of microservices

• Establish engineering excellence through robust testing, observability, and operational practices that support billions of daily requests

• Lead technical decisions on system architecture, performance optimization, and platform scalability

Product Innovation & Strategy

• Partner with product teams to define the technical roadmap for CHIRP ecosystem expansion and AI integration capabilities

• Drive platform evolution by building infrastructure, tooling, and developer experience improvements

• Ensure system reliability and operational health across multiple production environments while maintaining rapid development velocity

• Collaborate across teams to integrate with broader HubSpot platform initiatives

Emerging Technology & AI

• Explore and implement cutting-edge solutions including Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations and AI-native tooling

• Create developer-focused tools that simplify CHIRP service consumption through automated code generation

• Prototype and validate new platform capabilities that expand how HubSpot's core business logic can be accessed and leveraged

Technical Leadership

• Mentor engineering teams and foster technical growth while maintaining high standards for system design and code quality

• Guide architectural discussions and help engineers navigate complex technical trade-offs in distributed systems

• Support career development through hands-on coaching and knowledge sharing across the engineering organization

For this position, we are looking for:

• Background in platform engineering, building developer tools or developer experience teams

• Strong expertise in distributed systems, microservices architecture, and RPC frameworks

• Strong technical communication skills with ability to influence architectural decisions across multiple teams

• Experience with API gateway patterns and protocol transformation

Bonus points for:

• Experience with any schema evolution frameworks such as Apache Avro

• Experience with AI infrastructure or agent-based systems

• Background with CRM platforms or business process automation

• Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar AI integration frameworks

• Open source contributions to RPC frameworks or developer tooling

Our backend tech stack is Java but regardless of your background, we hire great engineers who love to learn.

If you’re a hands-on engineering leader and if this resonates with you, let’s talk.

Cash compensation range: 219650-351440 USD Annually

Pay & Benefits

The cash compensation below includes base salary, on-target commission for employees in eligible roles, and annual bonus targets under HubSpot’s bonus plan for eligible roles. In addition to cash compensation, some roles are eligible to participate in HubSpot’s equity plan to receive restricted stock units (RSUs). Some roles may also be eligible for overtime pay. Individual compensation packages are tailored to your skills, experience, qualifications, and other job-related reasons.

This resource will help guide how we recommend thinking about the range you see. Learn more about HubSpot’s compensation philosophy.

Benefits are also an important piece of your total compensation package. Explore the benefits and perks HubSpot offers to help employees grow better.

At HubSpot, fair compensation practices aren’t just about checking off the box for legal compliance. It’s about living out our value of transparency with our employees, candidates, and community.

Annual Cash Compensation Range:

$219,650—$351,440 USD