Staff Backend Engineer (Application Infra)

Responsibilities

• Lead the architectural design and implementation of a distributed workflow engine from scratch.
• Design and maintain a highly available platform targeting 5–6 nines of availability.
• Build scalable, fault-tolerant backend infrastructure for long-running workflows as code.
• Solve distributed locking, timers, deterministic execution, state management, tail latency, and edge-case challenges.
• Integrate AI/ML models for predictive scaling, bottleneck detection, and intelligent error recovery.
• Collaborate across the organization and influence platform adoption without direct authority.
• Set architectural standards and contribute high-performance, reliable code.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, Math, or a closely related field.
• At least 6 years of backend software development experience.
• Proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework.
• Experience working in cloud environments, particularly AWS.
• Experience building and maintaining highly available, distributed systems.
• Preferred: 10+ years of professional software development experience building backend infrastructure for global-scale traffic.
• Preferred: experience operating systems with 5–6 nines of availability and designing mission-critical databases, messaging queues, or orchestration engines.
• Preferred: expert Java and Python skills with a deep understanding of concurrency and memory management.
• Preferred: experience or architectural vision for using AI/ML in system automation and operations.
• Preferred: familiarity with Temporal or Cadence programming models and architecture, Kubernetes, and containerization.
• Preferred: Cassandra and TiDB experience.
• Preferred: contributions to major open-source distributed-systems projects.
• Preferred: expertise in distributed tracing, advanced telemetry, and highly observable systems.

Benefits

• Base pay ranges from $164,000/year to $282,000/year depending on geographic market and qualifications.
• Annual bonus opportunity of 0–20% of base salary.
• Medical, dental, vision, life, AD&D, disability, FSA, HSA, EAP, and 401(k) benefits with company match.
• 18–21 days of paid time off annually based on tenure, 12 paid holidays, and paid parental leave.
• Pre-tax commuter benefits and a free electric car charging station.
• Recruitment process includes application review, phone interview, and onsite or virtual onsite interview.