Engineer V - Software

PODS; Clearwater (FL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

PODS in the United States is seeking a Software Engineer V to set technical direction and own architecture that spans teams. You will design systems that others build within and be accountable for outcomes delivered by teams and yourself.

You will prototype risky components, ship critical‑path code, and shape how we test and learn at scale, enabling rapid experimentation on price display, communications, chat, and more with real customer data.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, Eng, or related field or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering, leading multi‑quarter initiatives across teams.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture across multiple teams and define integration contracts.
• Plan and lead multi‑quarter migrations from legacy systems.
• Identify riskiest assumptions and plan spikes to retire them.
• Own software design process, reviews, and production‑readiness standards.
• Help design interview loops and calibrate senior technical hires.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud architecture

Technical leadership

Hands-on coding

Mentoring engineers

Kotlin

TypeScript

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Azure

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

Docker

Datadog

Snowflake

Next.js

Job description

Job Summary As a Software Engineer V, you set technical direction. You own architecture that spans teams — designing the systems others build within — and you are accountable for technical outcomes delivered through others as well as by your own hands. You define the problems as much as you solve them: turning ambiguous business goals into technical strategy, sequencing multi-quarter initiatives, and making the build-vs-buy and migration calls that shape the platform for years.

Job Summary As a Software Engineer V, you set technical direction. You own architecture that spans teams — designing the systems others build within — and you are accountable for technical outcomes delivered through others as well as by your own hands. You define the problems as much as you solve them: turning ambiguous business goals into technical strategy, sequencing multi-quarter initiatives, and making the build-vs-buy and migration calls that shape the platform for years.
You are still hands-on. You prototype the risky parts, write the critical-path code, and stay close enough to production reality that your designs survive contact with it. And you shape how we test and learn at scale — building platforms where experimentation is cheap, so every team can iterate on price display, communications, chat, and beyond with real customer data.
A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life

• Technical Direction: Own the target architecture for a platform or domain that spans multiple teams. Author and drive the technical proposals and design reviews that align engineers around it.
• Force Multiplication: Mentor senior engineers, not just early-career ones. Raise the bar org-wide through reusable patterns, standards, and incisive design review.
• Hands‑On Delivery: Prototype novel or high‑risk components and ship critical-path code. Your credibility comes from working software, not slides.
• Operational Excellence: Define SLOs and the reliability strategy for your domain. Lead retrospectives on major incidents and turn them into architectural improvements.
• Test and Learn at Scale: Shape the experimentation strategy for your domain and build systems that make running a test a config change, not a project.
• Momentum: We work in short cycles, code released in days, experiments read out weekly, priorities adjusting as results come in. You design the architecture that makes this speed safe — systems where shipping fast and shipping well are the same motion.
• Strategic Partnership: Work with Product, leadership, and across organizations to align technical strategy with the business roadmap; make and defend build/buy/migrate decisions.
  

Responsibilities

• Architecture Ownership: Design and evolve systems spanning team boundaries; define the integration contracts and domain boundaries other teams build against.
• Migration Leadership: Plan and lead incremental, zero‑downtime migrations off legacy systems while the business keeps running.
• Technical Risk Management: Identify the riskiest assumptions in a multi‑quarter initiative early, and design spikes and milestones that retire them fast.
• Engineering Standards: Own key parts of the software design process, review culture, and production‑readiness bar across your domain.
• Hiring Bar: Help design interview loops and calibrate the technical bar for senior hires.
  

Our Tech Stack

• Front‑end: React, Vite, Next.js, TypeScript.
• Back‑end: Kotlin, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL.
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Microsoft Azure (Kubernetes, Functions, Front Door), Docker, Helm.
• Data & Analytics: Snowflake, Salesforce CDP.
• Experimentation & Observability: Eppo, Datadog.
• DevOps: Azure DevOps (ADO), Pipelines.
• AI Tooling: Cursor, Claude.
  

Basic Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience).
• Experience: 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leading multi‑quarter technical initiatives that spanned multiple teams.
• Distributed Systems: A track record of designing, operating, and evolving distributed systems in production at meaningful scale.
• Cloud Architecture: Deep expertise in cloud‑native architecture (Azure preferred): microservices, eventing, API design, and the failure modes of each.
• Design Communication: Exceptional written design skills — you can align a dozen engineers through a document.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as the founding or lead architect of a platform other teams build on.
• Experience with data‑warehouse‑native experimentation (Snowflake) and observability at scale (Datadog).
• Fluency with AI‑assisted development workflows (e.g., Cursor).