Sr Software Engineer - Core Backend & Platform Engineering

Core Backend Engineer

At Basis, we empower agencies and brands with cutting-edge software that automates digital media operations. Our all-in-one platform supports seamless planning, reporting, and financial reconciliation across direct, programmatic, search, and social media.

We're not just building advanced technology; we're also building a culture where passionate, motivated individuals come together to drive meaningful change. Our commitment to inclusivity and growth ensures our employees thrive both professionally and personally.

With our headquarters in Chicago, we offer flexible work options across the U.S. and Canada, including remote, hybrid, or on-site at headquarters.

Technology is at the core of what we do. Basis is an industry-leading platform that automates and simplifies the entire digital ad campaign process. It processes over 300 billion events per day and uses AI and machine learning across the full campaign lifecycle.

The Core Backend team is the connective tissue that keeps Basis running and enables other engineering teams to move faster. We own the core backend, the foundational customer-facing features developed within it, and the systems and standards that feature teams build on top of. We also define expectations for performance and reliability, observability foundations, and release tooling, along with the strategy for decomposing the system into well-defined microservices and evolving the application over time.

If you're energized by platform-level problems, by setting the standards other teams build on, and by work whose outcome is other teams shipping faster, this is the team for you.

Ways You'll Contribute

• Contribute to the platform's performance, observability, and reliability standards, and help drive adoption across feature teams.
• Reshaping how we build and ship: CI/CD, trunk-based development, and developing a layered testing strategy (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end) so teams can test in isolation and deploy independently.
• Collaborate closely with the Enterprise Developer Experience team to build shared tooling.
• Improve the developer and pre-production experience for the core backend — pipeline design, environment stability, and a fast development feedback loop.
• Lead platform projects across the stack — release tooling, platform reliability, and the patterns that guide how we decompose the core backend into services.
• Take ownership of deliverables, quality, and on-call support across our systems and components, and drive projects from ideation through production.
• Actively partner with the feature teams who depend on the systems you own — through pull requests, demos, design discussions, and identifying risks and blockers early.

What You Bring To The Table

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience developing large-scale cloud-native systems — reliability, scalability, and the observability that keeps them healthy.
• Depth in modern software delivery: CI/CD, trunk-based development, layered automated testing, and release practices like feature flagging, canary deployments, and progressive delivery.
• Experience contributing to org-wide standards — testing strategy, environment management, performance and SLOs.
• Fluency with AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) as a core part of your development workflow — for code generation, debugging, exploring unfamiliar codebases, and documentation — paired with strong judgment for evaluating, refining, and taking full ownership of AI-generated output.
• A thoughtful, collaborative approach to design and decision-making, and a commitment to inclusive environments where all voices are valued.

Our Tech Stack

• Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, React, Java, Python
• PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Sidekiq
• AWS, EC2, RDS, Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes
• Datadog, Airbrake

$119,051 - $160,000 a year This salary range reflects a typical compensation range for the role and level in most U.S. locations. Final compensation offered will depend on your location, experience, and skills. Total compensation may also include bonuses, equity, and competitive benefits.

At Basis, integrity is at the core of how we hire. To protect our candidates and our company, we verify identity, education, and employment history for all hires. Some roles may also require onsite or in-person interviews as part of the process. Any misrepresentation of identity, experience, or skills may result in removal from the hiring process or termination of employment. We value transparency and authenticity and expect the same from every applicant.

Don't have every skill listed? No problem! We know experience can be built in many ways. If you have relevant skills that aren't reflected in your resume, we encourage you to share them in an optional cover letter.

We're committed to our people's growth and well-being because our success is tied to theirs. That's why we've earned recognition as a top workplace, including: Ad Age, #1 Best Places to Work, WorkLife's #1 Most Committed to Work Life Balance, and the Chicago Tribune's Top Workplaces in Chicago. We offer competitive perks, including a flexible work week, 401k/RRSP matching, mental health support, paid sabbaticals, generous parental leave, flexible work options, and more.

Basis is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate all team members regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or cultural background, religion, disability, age, and beyond.

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