API Gateway Platform Engineer (Backend)

DoorDash; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 131,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with employer matching

16 weeks parental leave

Medical, dental, vision benefits

11 paid holidays

Paid time off and paid sick leave

Disability insurance

Basic life insurance

Mental health program

Commuter benefits

Family-forming assistance

Job summary

DoorDash is expanding its Unified Gateway team to design and maintain an API gateway platform that fronts DoorDash traffic. You will translate HTTP/JSON to gRPC, enable declarative endpoint definitions, and ensure authentication, routing, and resilience across global services for consumer, merchant, and dasher experiences.

Ideal candidates bring 2+ years in backend or platform engineering, strong Kotlin and JVM expertise, and a solid grasp of distributed systems, OpenAPI, and high-throughput

Qualifications

• 2+ years in backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering.
• Experience with gRPC, REST APIs, Protocol Buffers, and service-to-service patterns.
• Strong Kotlin or JVM language expertise for high-scale systems.
• Familiarity with asynchronous/reactive frameworks (e.g., Vert.x) is a plus.
• Experience in high-throughput, production-grade systems.
• Understanding of distributed systems—consistency, fault tolerance, load balancing.
• Knowledge of API gateway concerns: auth, routing, OpenAPI, schema management.
• Proficient with AI coding tools across the full SDLC.

Responsibilities

• Design and build robust, scalable systems with maintainability in mind.
• Improve performance, reliability, scalability, and security of the gateway.
• Drive API management best practices, service discovery, load balancing, fault tolerance.
• Champion Unified Gateway adoption across product teams.
• Troubleshoot complex issues in a high-throughput production environment.
• Evaluate and integrate new technologies to enhance platform capabilities.
• Leverage AI coding tools throughout design, coding, testing, and release.

Skills

Backend engineering

gRPC

REST APIs

Protocol Buffers

Kotlin (JVM)

Asynchronous/Reactive (Vert.x)

Distributed systems

API gateway concepts

OpenAPI

AI coding tools (Claude/Code/Cursor)

Tools

Vert.x

Job description

DoorDash is expanding its Unified Gateway team to design and maintain an API gateway platform that fronts DoorDash traffic. You will translate HTTP/JSON to gRPC, enable declarative endpoint definitions, and ensure authentication, routing, and resilience across global services for consumer, merchant, and dasher experiences.

Ideal candidates bring 2+ years in backend or platform engineering, strong Kotlin and JVM expertise, and a solid grasp of distributed systems, OpenAPI, and high-throughput