Backend Engineer, API Gateway Platform

DoorDash; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 131,000 - 192,000; Full time

Job summary

DoorDash is seeking a Backend Engineer in Seattle, WA, to build and maintain the Unified Gateway API platform that fronts our traffic, translating REST/JSON into gRPC and handling authentication, routing, and resilience at scale.

You will design robust systems, improve reliability and security, drive API management practices, and champion platform adoption across product teams while leveraging AI coding tools in the full software lifecycle.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering.
• Experience with gRPC, REST APIs, Protobuf, and service-to-service patterns.
• Knowledge of Kotlin (or JVM) for high-scale, resilient systems; Vert.x a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and build robust, scalable systems with engineering excellence and long-term maintainability in mind.
• Improve performance, reliability, scalability, and security across the gateway and its request-processing pipeline.
• Drive best practices in API management, service discovery, load balancing, and fault tolerance.
• Champion adoption of the Unified Gateway platform across product teams.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in our high-throughput production environment.
• Evaluate and integrate new technologies to enhance the platform's capabilities.
• Leverage the latest AI coding tools and best practices in the full software development lifecycle.

Skills

Backend engineering

gRPC

REST APIs

Protocol Buffers

Kotlin

JVM

Reactive programming

Distributed systems

API gateway

AI coding tools

Tools

Vert.x

OpenAPI

Job description

DoorDash is seeking a Backend Engineer in Seattle, WA, to build and maintain the Unified Gateway API platform that fronts our traffic, translating REST/JSON into gRPC and handling authentication, routing, and resilience at scale.

You will design robust systems, improve reliability and security, drive API management practices, and champion platform adoption across product teams while leveraging AI coding tools in the full software lifecycle.