Senior Backend Software Engineer (United States)

Overview

Journey.ai is a growth-stage startup focused on building cutting edge solutions for identity protection. Our software provides secure payments, authentication, document signatures, and custom forms to contact centers. With our Zero Knowledge® platform, agents can request actions and information from callers without ever losing control and privacy of customer data.

The company currently operates remotely, but most of the team is based in Colorado and (optional) events are occasionally held in the Denver area.

Our engineering team is currently a small team of full-time employees and contractors. We are expanding the team to support our growing list of enterprise customers and help extend our platform beyond the startup stages.

Technology & Product

Our software is largely built using Go and Next.js (Typescript). We follow a monorepo structure that houses a custom Go (gin) API, a distributed Go identity network, and a React-based frontend application ecosystem. Some of our applications are client-side React (built with Vite) while our core admin and client applications are server-side Next.js. These frontend applications use common libraries to interact with the API in a standardized way. Everything is wired with OpenTelemetry for end-to-end observability.

Some of our core tenets on the engineering team include:

• Fully localized development via containers
• Reliable CI/CD pipelines
• Security is the highest priority
• We ship the simplest solutions
• Customer-driven feedback

We do not expect to replace engineers or the engineering process with AI developer tools, however we do utilize these tools to assist in day-to-day operations.

Role & Skills

We are looking for an expert with strong opinions and experience to help us continue implementing standards for our API and identity network services. One of our ongoing efforts is to refactor our API to have clear and meaningful abstraction layers as a foundation for modularity and test hierarchy. The end goal is to have a clear technical base and process for implementing new features, routes, database models so that we may improve our delivery efficiency. Once we’ve completed these efforts, you will get to pick which parts of the system to own or take the lead on.

Responsibilities for this role include:

• Designing logic and systems using the Go language and ecosystem (with 4+ years of expertise in backend development)
• Analyzing and optimizing existing server-side Go code
• Contributing to team plans and architectural decisions involving distributed systems and multiple services/apps
• Reviewing pull requests from peers, mid-level engineers, and contractors
• Mentoring and delegating to mid-level engineers and contractors with an emphasis on onboarding and knowledge transfer
• Coordinating with other engineers across multiple efforts and projects

Our ideal candidate can also:

• Be proactive and take initiative when it comes to creating and executing tasks
• Help improve and refine our engineering process
• Work in ambiguous environments and help shape technical direction from the ground up
• Display strong technical judgement and can balance cost, scalability, and product needs

Interview Process

Our interviews are designed to be brief yet effective. After an initial phone screening, candidates will be interviewed by two staff-level engineers to assess technical skills, experience, and culture fit. Most of the process is verbal, however there will be a live technical assessment to gauge thought-process and collaborative skills. The entire process will be done remotely. Use of AI will not be permitted during the assessment, but documentation and reference searches will be.

This process can be done as quickly as the candidate is willing to move, typically in the range of three days to two weeks.

Non-traditional paths are welcome to apply. We primarily care about demonstrable expertise, however you got there.