Remote Staff Software Engineer — AI & Distributed Systems Leader

Bigcommerce; Austin, Atlanta (TX, GA); Hybrid; USD 186,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

BigCommerce is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to guide architecture for scalable, distributed systems and to lead AI initiatives within our open commerce ecosystem. You will mentor engineers, collaborate with product and design teams, and drive engineering excellence across global teams.

You’ll influence technical direction, advance GenAI-enabled capabilities, and ensure secure, reliable delivery at scale for tens of thousands of merchants worldwide.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years of professional software engineering experience delivering production systems.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Expertise in back-end development with two or more server-side languages (e.g., PHP, Go, Scala, Java, Python, Ruby).
• Proven experience in architecting, building, and maintaining large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts, including consensus, consistency, and fault tolerance.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or similar) and microservices architecture.
• Solid experience with SQL, in-memory storage, and other data storage solutions.
• Experience operating and monitoring services in production, including familiarity with observability tooling (e.g., Sentry, Kibana, Datadog).
• Solid grasp of software design principles, testing strategies, and modern development practices.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to articulate design decisions and rationale.
• Proven track record of technical leadership and mentorship.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and driving clarity across complex initiatives.
• Passionate about learning, teaching, and promoting engineering excellence.
• Experience building product solutions with LLMs and GenAI technologies (preferred).
• Familiarity with modern AI infrastructure and SaaS/platform-scale experience (preferred).

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and evolution of scalable, reliable, high-performance distributed systems.
• Drive architectural discussions that span multiple domains across the platform and participate in cross-domain architectural working groups.
• Contribute to the definition and execution of the long-term technical roadmap.
• Ensure technical decisions align with performance, scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability goals.
• Drive initiatives to integrate AI technologies, including ML models and GenAI solutions, into products.
• Evaluate emerging AI infrastructure and advocate for adoption where value is clear.
• Stay current with distributed systems, cloud technologies, and AI advancements and share knowledge.
• Build and maintain high-performance, reliable, and secure software systems.
• Lead by example in writing testable, maintainable code and conducting thorough reviews.
• Identify and address performance bottlenecks, scalability challenges, and reliability issues.
• Build tools and frameworks that enable faster, safer delivery by other engineers.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineers at all levels.
• Promote knowledge sharing and continuous improvement across teams.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP)

Microservices architecture

SQL / Data storage

Observability tools

Leadership & mentorship

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Sentry

Kibana

Datadog

Job description

BigCommerce is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to guide architecture for scalable, distributed systems and to lead AI initiatives within our open commerce ecosystem. You will mentor engineers, collaborate with product and design teams, and drive engineering excellence across global teams.

You’ll influence technical direction, advance GenAI-enabled capabilities, and ensure secure, reliable delivery at scale for tens of thousands of merchants worldwide.