Staff Backend Platform Engineer

Role Description

Conversica is seeking a Staff Backend Platform Engineer to set the technical direction for the production backend systems that power our next-generation AI platform. This is a senior individual contributor role with platform-wide scope, focused on the architecture and engineering standards that make our agentic AI possible.

• Set the technical direction for Conversica's backend platform, owning architecture decisions that span integrations, data, messaging, and orchestration across the entire system.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives that touch multiple engineering teams, partnering with AI Engineering, Product, and Integrations leadership to shape platform strategy and roadmap.
• Define and evolve org-wide engineering standards for backend service design, data modeling, integration patterns, observability, and operational excellence.
• Identify systemic reliability, scalability, and performance risks across the platform and lead the engineering response.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers across the backend organization, raising the technical bar through design reviews, written technical guidance, and pairing on hard problems.
• Represent the backend platform in technical strategy discussions with executive leadership and contribute to multi-quarter roadmap planning.
• Build and ship production code yourself; this is a hands-on individual contributor role, not a pure architect role.

What You'll Build

• Integration platform: inbound and outbound data processors, partner APIs, webhook ingestion, CSV bulk imports, sync logic, and resilient retry/backoff patterns for unreliable external systems.
• Messaging infrastructure: email (AWS SES), SMS (Twilio), and chat (OpenAI Chatkit) delivery pipelines including throughput management, deliverability, suppression, and audit trails.
• Platform services: the Campaign, Playbook, Flows, Contact, Knowledge, and Reporting services that compose our domain model.
• Data foundations: Postgres schema design, data models for contacts, conversations, campaigns, and configuration. Storage patterns optimized for both transactional workloads and agent retrieval.
• Orchestration and event flows: FastAPI services, Celery workflows, EventBridge-driven event handling, queue management, and the action dispatch layer that executes agent decisions across CRM, calendar, and notification systems.

Success in this Role

In your first 6 to 12 months in this role:

• You’ve established the integration, data, and messaging patterns that other backend engineers build against, and the platform’s engineering standards are visibly stronger because of you.
• You’ve led at least one cross-team technical initiative end to end, including the consensus-building, design, delivery, and operational handoff.
• You’ve raised the operational maturity of the platform, measurably improving reliability, performance, or developer leverage in systems other teams depend on.

Qualifications

• Equivalent of 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with significant focus on backend platform, integrations, or data infrastructure - including hands-on responsibility for systems running in production at scale.
• Track record of leading cross-team or org-wide technical initiatives from conception through production, including the soft work of building consensus and unblocking other engineers.
• Proven experience deploying and operating production backend systems at scale.
• Strong proficiency in Python, including production experience with FastAPI, Celery, and similar async/queue-based frameworks.
• Deep experience with Postgres including schema design, query optimization, and operating Postgres in production.
• Experience working with large datasets and navigating real-world data quality challenges across heterogeneous source systems.
• Experience setting engineering standards (service design, data architecture, operational practices) that other engineers adopted and built on.
• Experience designing and operating integrations with third-party SaaS systems including handling rate limits, schema drift, and partial failures.
• Strong background in modern cloud-based architectures, particularly AWS.
• Active use of modern AI coding tools (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, or similar) as part of your development workflow.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Experience

• Experience working in B2B SaaS environments.
• Experience integrating with Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs), Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs), Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), or Dealer Management Systems (DMS).
• Production experience with Terraform, EKS, Datadog, and GitLab.
• Experience operating messaging infrastructure including SMTP, SMS aggregators, or chat platforms.
• Experience building platforms that AI agents or other automated systems consume.
• Experience with Redshift, DynamoDB, EventBridge, and Redis.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits.
• PTO, holiday pay, 401(k), and equity.

Company Description

Conversica is a remote-first company building AI-powered solutions that help businesses engage customers more effectively. You'll join a small, experienced platform engineering team and partner closely with our AI Engineering team to build the backend that powers our agent-native platform, influence the direction of the platform, and help build the durable, customer-ready systems that turn emerging AI capabilities into reliable products.