Senior Backend Engineer - Platform

Details

Hi, I'm Stephen, Director of Engineering at Customer.io. I’m looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our growing Engineering team!

Responsibilities

• Architect and build highly scalable, distributed systems in Go that handle mission-critical workloads.
• Lead design discussions and set best practices for fault tolerance, system reliability, and performance optimization.
• Influence the technical roadmap by identifying key opportunities for innovation and improvement.
• Drive large-scale architectural decisions, ensuring the platform is built for growth and operational excellence.
• Enhance inter-service communication by improving RPC frameworks, event-driven architectures, and data pipelines.
• Develop infrastructure automation to streamline deployments, monitoring, and scaling using Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD tooling.
• Implement and refine observability strategies, leveraging tools like OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and distributed tracing.
• Mentor and support engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.
• Collaborate across teams, influencing product, security, and infrastructure decisions to align with long-term company goals.

Requirements

• Expertise in distributed systems architecture, including consensus algorithms, CAP theorem, eventual consistency, and leader election.
• Strong proficiency in Go (or another strongly typed language like Java, Rust, or Kotlin) with experience building high-performance services.
• Deep knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and best practices for scalability, networking, and security.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and container orchestration tools.
• Proficiency in infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation) to automate cloud-based deployments.
• Experience working with event-driven architectures, messaging systems (Kafka, NATS, RabbitMQ), and real-time data processing.
• Passion for automation, with experience designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Jenkins).
• Strong understanding of observability and debugging techniques, including monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, with the ability to diagnose and resolve complex system issues efficiently.
• Proven track record of leadership, mentoring engineers, driving best practices, and influencing engineering culture.

What we're looking for

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on distributed systems, backend infrastructure, or platform engineering.
• 5+ years of experience designing and deploying large-scale distributed architectures in cloud environments.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and influence technical decisions across multiple teams.
• Proven experience designing and optimizing APIs and service-to-service communication patterns (gRPC, REST, GraphQL).
• Deep experience with databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, or BigTable) and performance tuning strategies.
• A security-first mindset, ensuring best practices for authentication, authorization, and data protection.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to present complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• A DevOps mindset, embracing automation, testing, and continuous delivery.
• An AI-forward mindset, leading by example in integrating AI tools into engineering workflows to help the organization prototype, iterate, and ship more effectively.
• Passion for mentoring and growing engineers, fostering an environment of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO with encouragement for at least 20 vacation days (in addition to holidays and sick days).
• 16 weeks paid parental leave (including adoption and foster care).
• 100% paid insurance premiums for you and your dependents.
• 401k retirement matching - up to 5% dollar-for-dollar match.
• $1,500 annual healthy lifestyle budget for wellness activities.
• $250/month remote work stipend for internet, cell phone, and other remote work expenses.
• $300/month co-working space rental reimbursement.
• $2,000/year professional education budget for conferences, courses, workshops, books.
• $1,500 home office budget to ensure ergonomic workspace.
• One month sabbatical after five years at Customer.io.
• Opportunities to meet in person with peers throughout the year.

Applicants will undergo background checks and employment verifications. Customer.io is dedicated to inclusion and equity in the tech industry, promoting bias-free hiring and inclusive culture.

Hiring Process

1. 30-minute video call with a recruiter.
2. 60-minute scaling interview with engineering team members.
3. Take-home assignment plus a 60-minute review call.
4. Final interview with the hiring manager.

Candidates must not use AI or automation during interviews or assessments; violations will lead to removal from consideration.