The Opportunity
As Staff Engineer, Desktop Platform, you’ll join the Postman Client Platform team and lead the technical direction of our Electron-based desktop application, used by over 40 million developers worldwide. You will shape its architecture, performance, and security for years to come.
This is an IC-first role. You’ll design and build every day while also serving as the technical anchor for our Desktop Platform. You will define its architecture, implement critical features, and mentor engineers, guiding how Postman evolves across desktop operating systems.
About the Team
The Client Platform organization provides the “paved path” for building, testing, and releasing Postman’s web and desktop applications. We own the frameworks, SDKs, build tooling, shared libraries, and infrastructure that product engineers rely on every day. Our platform is the foundation that hundreds of Postman engineers use to deliver features and improvements to over 40 million customers.
Within this group, the Desktop Platform team is responsible for Postman’s Electron integration and OS-level infrastructure. The team ensures Postman is installable, updatable, performant, and secure across Windows, macOS, and Linux, working closely with the Client SDK and Build/Release teams to provide a consistent and reliable experience.
What You’ll Do
- Own the architecture for Postman’s Electron-based desktop application.
- Design and implement core desktop features, including installers, auto-updates, and OS integrations.
- Improve performance across desktop platforms, from startup time to memory and CPU usage.
- Collaborate across engineering to ensure Postman delivers a consistent, performant, and secure desktop experience.
- Drive security best practices for Electron apps, including sandboxing and safe updates.
- Keep Postman current with Electron releases.
- Partner with Client SDK and Build/Release teams to align architecture and delivery.
- Shape technical direction across engineering by collaborating with other platform teams and aligning them on desktop needs.
Traits That Will Make You Successful
- Hands-on leadership: You lead by building and guide others through influence and mentorship.
- Systems thinker: You understand how desktop platforms fit together, from OS APIs to Electron internals to shared client frameworks, and design solutions with the whole system in mind.
- Influential partner: You work effectively across engineering teams, building alignment and trust to drive the right technical outcomes.
- Bias for clarity: You make technical direction and trade-offs easy for others to understand.
- Pragmatic problem solver: You balance performance, security, and user experience with delivery speed.
- High standards: You care deeply about quality and take pride in raising the bar for others.
Your Experience
- Proven track record as a Staff, Principal, or Lead engineer building cross-platform desktop applications.
- Deep expertise with Electron, Node.js, and modern web technologies (JavaScript, TypeScript, React).
- Strong understanding of cross-platform packaging, auto-update systems, and OS-level integration (Windows, macOS, Linux).
- Experience improving performance and security in large-scale desktop applications.
- Proficiency in C++ for writing native modules or integrations.
- Familiarity with Win32 APIs and macOS APIs for native integration and platform-specific optimizations.
- Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, mentor engineers, and influence peers across teams.
- Comfortable acting as the technical anchor for a lean team, with the ability to shape its future growth.
