Senior Backend Software Engineer

Otter; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Otter is building the future of online food delivery by powering direct-to-consumer dining experiences.

As a backend generalist on a fast-paced, product-focused engineering team, you will design, scale, and maintain services that drive direct ordering, storefront configurations, and merchant tools.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep understanding of backend system design, APIs, data stores, microservices, concurrency, and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Architecture, build, and maintain highly scalable backend services in Java to power our direct ordering ecosystem and storefront configuration tools.
• Design and optimize robust, flexible APIs
• Work closely with front-end engineers, product managers, and designers to translate merchant and consumer needs into reliable backend logic.

Skills

Java

Go

APIs

Microservices

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Databases

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience

Tools

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Redis

Job description

Who We Are

In the past, to be a successful restaurateur, you simply had to have a passion for food and a passion for people - but to succeed as a digital restaurateur you also need to have a passion for technology. We believe in the joy of serving others, and that's why we created Otter – to help restaurateurs succeed in online food delivery. Restaurants around the world, both large and small, including Chick-fil-A, Ben & Jerry’s, KFC, and Eataly trust our software to power their delivery business. We increase sales, reduce order issues, and decrease delivery headaches.

Who We Are

In the past, to be a successful restaurateur, you simply had to have a passion for food and a passion for people - but to succeed as a digital restaurateur you also need to have a passion for technology. We believe in the joy of serving others, and that's why we created Otter – to help restaurateurs succeed in online food delivery. Restaurants around the world, both large and small, including Chick-fil-A, Ben & Jerry’s, KFC, and Eataly trust our software to power their delivery business. We increase sales, reduce order issues, and decrease delivery headaches.

What You’ll Do

At Otter Grow, we are a fast-paced, product-focused engineering team building the future of Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) dining. Otter Grow provides the end-to-end platform for direct ordering, merchant storefront configurations, and hyper-targeted customer engagement.

As a backend generalist on this team, you will design and scale the services that power our customizable front-end web experiences, facility direct ordering, and advanced merchant tools, ensuring a seamless experience for customers.

Core Responsibilities

• Architecture, build, and maintain highly scalable backend services in Java to power our direct ordering ecosystem and storefront configuration tools.
• Design and optimize robust, flexible APIs
• Work closely with front-end engineers, product managers, and designers to translate merchant and consumer needs into reliable backend logic.

What We Are Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience is required.
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep understanding of backend system design, APIs, data stores, microservices, concurrency, and distributed systems
• Our stack heavily utilizes Java and Go, but we care more about your engineering fundamentals than the specific languages you've used.
• Experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis)
• Experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure

Preferred Qualifications

• Working on D2C, e-commerce, or transactional product engineering teams.
• Experience building microservices that handle complex merchant configurations, ordering states, or payment flows.
• A full-stack background or comfort working closely with front-end technologies. While this is a backend-heavy generalist role, an understanding of how backend systems impact front-end web customization and performance is highly valued.
• Passion for product impact and building systems that directly support customers and operators

Why join us

• Demand for online food delivery is growing really fast! In the last 5 years, just in the US, the overall market has expanded 10X from $10B to $100B, and could expand to $500bn- $1T by 2030.