Staff Software Engineer, Backend

Staff Engineer at Customer.io - Remote Americas — Remote

Remote-First, Americas-Friendly: Customer.io explicitly hires across the USA, Canada, and LATAM, making this one of the broader remote footprints you'll find at a well-funded SaaS company. The role doesn't advertise fixed hours, and the async documentation culture (frameworks, written standards) suggests meaningful schedule flexibility — a strong signal for nomads in overlapping time zones.

Timezone Considerations: With teams spread across the Americas, expect core collaboration hours roughly in the UTC-8 to UTC-3 window. This works well from popular nomad hubs like Medellín (UTC-5), Mexico City (UTC-6), or Lisbon (UTC+1, with early-morning overlap). Full-time European or Southeast Asian bases would be more challenging given the on-call rotation requirement.

Salary vs. Cost of Living:

• Medellín, Colombia: At $200K–$240K USD, you'd live extremely comfortably — monthly expenses for a professional are roughly $1,500–$2,500. This is a 10–15× surplus.
• Lisbon, Portugal: Monthly costs ~$2,500–$3,500 for a good lifestyle; salary still provides strong savings, though you'd need to verify visa eligibility since Portugal/EU isn't in the stated allowed regions.
• Bangkok, Thailand: Monthly ~$1,500–$2,500; excellent value, but timezone overlap with Americas teams would be difficult.

Travel Perks: Remote work stipend and wellness stipend directly support a location-independent setup. No coworking or meetup budget is explicitly mentioned, but the professional development budget could fund conferences.

Hi, I'm Paul, VP of Engineering at Customer.io . We're looking for a staff engineer to set technical direction for the systems that move billions of messages a day. This isn't a role about shipping more, faster. It's about deciding what gets built, where the architecture needs to go next, and raising the ceiling for the engineers around you.

About Customer.io

Over 9,000 companies — from scrappy startups to global brands — use our platform to send billions of emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS every day. Customer.io powers automated communication that people actually want to receive.

We help teams send smarter, more relevant messages using real-time behavioral data. Under the hood: Go, React, Ember and AI help us ship fast and scale with confidence.

What We Value

Ownership at company scale
You take on the problems nobody has claimed yet — the ones that span squads, have no obvious owner, and would quietly cost us a year if left alone. You either solve them or get leadership aligned to.

Engineers with product taste
You think like a user, not just an engineer. You connect architectural decisions to what customers actually experience, and you can explain that connection to people who don't write Go.

A healthy skepticism for "the way things are done"
You retire practices that have outlived their usefulness, including ones you helped build. Best practices matter — but never more than forward motion.

Force multiplication
Your best quarter isn't measured by what you shipped. It's measured by what the department can now do that it couldn't before.

What You'll Do

• Shape the technical direction of our distributed messaging systems in Go — making the high-level architectural calls on mission-critical services where scale, cost, and reliability are all in tension
• Take on ambiguous, high-stakes problems that cross squad and function boundaries, and drive them to a decision when the right answer isn't obvious to anyone yet
• Build consensus on contested technical questions across teams, and communicate the tradeoffs clearly enough that senior leadership can act on them
• Raise the department's bar — set quality and design standards, mentor senior engineers, and turn what you know into frameworks and documentation other teams can use without you in the room
• Drive engineering process and tooling improvements that span multiple squads, not just your own
• Participate in an on-call rotation as required, supporting the reliability of the systems you build
• Interview and calibrate against our career ladder, giving honest, evidence-based assessments of candidates
• Use AI agents to make multi-file changes by scoping the work, writing the prompt, and verifying the output

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years building scalable, distributed systems in Go (or similar statically typed languages), including several as the person others turned to on architecture
• Depth across multiple systems or domains, not just one — you've been the recognized expert in more than one place
• A track record of designing for production reality: you quantify tradeoffs in throughput, cost, and reliability rather than picking a reasonable path and defending it
• Experience designing observability and recovery as first-class concerns — metrics, alerting, rollback, backpressure, checkpointing — not logging added afterward
• Comfort working in cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP), with relational databases (we use MySQL) and a real understanding of performance tradeoffs
• Evidence of making other engineers better: mentorship, technical writing, design review, standards that outlasted your involvement
• A bias for action over perfection, and the judgment to know which decisions are worth slowing down for

We believe in transparency. Starting salary for this role is $200,000 – $240,000 USD (or equivalent in local currency) depending on experience and subject to market rate adjustment. This role also carries a 10% annual bonus target . In addition to base salary, this role includes an equity grant in the form of stock options, so you share in the success you help build.

We know our people are what make us great, and we're committed to taking great care of them. Our inclusive benefits package supports your well-being and growth, including 100% coverage of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and supplemental insurance premiums for you and your family. We also offer 16 weeks paid parental leave, unlimited PTO, stipends for remote work and wellness, a professional development budget, and more.

See full benefits here

Our Process

No gotchas, no trick questions — just a clear, human process designed to help both of us make an informed decision.

• Application — We review everyone with care. Tell us why you're interested.
• Recruiter Call (30 mins) — Let's chat about what you're looking for and how we work.
• Hiring Manager Interview (60 mins) — Talk with one of our hiring managers about your working style and a project you've owned end-to-end, plus a short AI-assisted coding exercise.
• Architecture Interview (60 mins) — A collaborative system design conversation focused on scaling challenges, tradeoffs, and failure modes.
• Take-Home Assignment — Complete a short, realistic task similar to what you'd work on here.
• Assignment Review Call (60 mins) — Walk us through your work and discuss tradeoffs, priorities, and how you'd iterate.

All final candidates will be asked to complete a background check and employment verifications as part of our pre-employment process.

Customer.io recognizes the stifling impact of systemic injustice on diverse communities. We commit to using our influence to increase inclusion and equity within the tech industry. We strive to build an inclusive team culture, implement bias-free hiring practices, and develop community partnerships to expand our global impact.

Zoom is the only video conference platform that we use; virtual interviews will be conducted using the video capability (i.e., not via the chat), and offers will be extended in writing on official Customer.io letterhead. Please be vigilant in all of your job search activity, and if you have any questions please contact View email address on click.appcast.io .

Join Us!

We believe in empathy, transparency, responsibility, and, yes, a little awkwardness. If you're excited by what you read and want to build software that makes communication better for everyone —

Is this role fully remote, and which countries are eligible? Yes, this is a fully remote position. Customer.io hires across the USA, Canada, and LATAM (Latin America). Specific country eligibility may vary, so it's worth confirming with the recruiter during the initial call. What is the salary range for this Staff Engineer role? The starting salary is $200,000–$240,000 USD (or equivalent in local currency), depending on experience. The role also includes a 10% annual bonus target and an equity grant in the form of stock options. What tech stack will I be working with at Customer.io? The primary backend language is Go, with MySQL as the relational database and cloud infrastructure on AWS and GCP. The frontend stack includes React and Ember, and AI agents are used in the development workflow. Does this role require on-call duties? Yes, the Staff Engineer role includes participation in an on-call rotation to support the reliability of the distributed messaging systems you help build and architect. What does the interview process look like? There are six steps: an application review, a 30-minute recruiter call, a 60-minute hiring manager interview with a coding exercise, a 60-minute architecture interview, a take-home assignment, and a final 60-minute assignment review call. All interviews are conducted via Zoom video.

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