Senior Software Engineer

Relativity; Illinois; Hybrid; USD 126,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Home office stipend

Two annual company breaks

Equity program

Job summary

Relativity is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, develop, and operate distributed cloud services at petabyte scale within a hybrid environment in Illinois. You will build backend data pipelines, collaborate with diverse teams, and drive reliability through incident response and on-call work.

The role emphasizes mentorship and code quality through design reviews. You will own end-to-end solutions, apply cross-functional skills, and contribute to AI-powered legal data platforms.

Qualifications

• Experience with designing, building and operating cloud-native distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, observability, and incident response.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and operate distributed, scalable cloud services.
• Build backend data pipelines delivering customer impact.
• Collaborate with product and engineering partners to solve problems at scale.
• Lead reviews, provide technical direction, and mentor teammates.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud-native

Code reviews

On-call ownership

Mentorship

Tools

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Claude Code

Job description

## Senior Software EngineerApplyremote type: Engineeringlocations: Illinoistime type: Full timeposted on: Posted Todayjob requisition id: 26-0355***Posting Type***Hybrid/Remote***Job Overview***Who We Are Relativity is a leading legal data intelligence company building technology that helps users organize data, discover the truth, and act on it with confidence. Our AI‐powered, cloud platform, RelativityOne, transforms massive volumes of complex information into actionable insights for litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, data breach responses, and other high‐stakes legal work where accuracy and trust are crucial. The world’s largest law firms, corporations, and government agencies rely on Relativity’s legal AI software to securely surface and manage the most relevant and impactful information in their matters. Beyond our commercial impact, we’re deeply committed to expanding access to technology for academic institutions through Relativity Academic and supporting pro bono legal work through Justice for Change. What We Do At Relativity, engineers don’t just write code— they harness AI tools to architect, optimize, and deliver scalable software faster and shape the future of legal technology. They shape how industries uncover critical insights, ensure compliance, advance access to justice and continuously evolve our platform using the latest technologies, including cloud-native architectures, AI capabilities, and modern developer tooling. Our AI powers privacy programs, identifies confidential information, and detects language indicating misconduct. We’re reimagining how legal professionals uncover truth at scale, and engineering is at the heart of that transformation. Our team manages the core structured data platform and infrastructure that powers RelativityOne, overseeing thousands of terabytes of critical customer data through highly automated cloud-native systems. We continuously evaluate and adopt emerging cloud technologies to deliver exceptional availability, performance, and scale. The complexity of our environment drives constant innovation, providing engineers with opportunities to solve unique technical challenges and influence the future of our platform. If you’re passionate about solving hard problems, designing for scale, and building tools that matter—while working in a culture that values transparency, innovation, and shared success— Relativity offers the opportunity to make a measurable difference in the marketplace.***Job Description and Requirements*****What You’ll Do*** Design, develop, and operate distributed, scalable, secure full-stack cloud services, delivering reliable systems at petabyte scale.* Build backend services and data pipelines to deliver customer impact.* Collaborate daily with a diverse group of teammates and product partners to solve problems, achieve team goals, and build AI-powered legal data solutions that operate at massive scale.* Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in production environments as well as providing root cause analysis* Influence reliability, security, and performance practices through example and feedback* Provide technical direction and mentorship to your team, lead design and code reviews, raising engineering quality and maintainability.* Drive service ownership by leading reliability efforts, participating in on-call rotations, and guiding incident response, resolution, and root cause analysis.**What We’re Looking For****Required*** This position requires the successful acquisition and maintenance of a Public Trust clearance. Candidates must be U.S. citizens to satisfy applicable clearance eligibility requirements.* 5+years of experience designing, building and operating cloud-native systems.* Strong understanding of cloud-native development and distributed architectures.* Demonstrated ability to own and deliver complex solutions end to end, improving quality through thoughtful design discussions and thorough code reviews* Solid understanding of CI/CD, observability, and incident response.* Strong cross-functional communication and collaboration skills.* Deep understanding of distributed systems fundamentals replication strategies, partitioning, and CAP/PACELC trade-offs* Proven track record of diagnosing and resolving complex issues like data skew, hot spots, clock skew, and split-brain scenarios**Preferred*** Experience building systems at scale.* Familiarity with performance tuning and scalability trade-offs.* Experience in high-scale or regulated environments.* Familiarity with AI-development tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor or Claude Code.* Familiarity with storage engine internals — LSM trees, B-trees, compaction strategies, and write amplification* Familiarity with FedRAMP compliance frameworks**Why We Could Be A Great Fit*** **Impactful Mission:***Organize Data, Discover the Truth and Act on It*- Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and leading law firms managing high-stakes matters on our platform.* **Growth Path:** Engineers gain exposure across the stack, from distributed systems to AI-enabled workflows, accelerating career growth.* **Engineering Culture:** Continuous delivery, strong observability, and end-to-end ownership.* **Inclusive Environment:** Diverse backgrounds and perspectives make us stronger.* **Community Impact:** Volunteer opportunities and company-sponsored charitable programs.* **Compensation & Benefits:**Competitive salary, health and retirement programs, wellness resources, discretionary time off (DTO), parental leave for primary and secondary caregivers, two annual company breaks, home office stipend, and an equity program.**Relativity is committed to competitive, fair, and equitable compensation practices.**This position is eligible for total compensation which includes a competitive base salary, an annual performance bonus, and long-term incentives.The expected salary range for this role is between following values:$126,000 and $190,000The final offered salary will be based on several factors, including but not limited to the candidate's depth of experience, skill set, qualifications, and internal pay equity. Hiring at the top end of the range would not be typical, to allow for future meaningful salary growth in this position. **Required Skills:**Budget Management, Contract Management, Data Analysis, Environmental Regulations, Policy Development, Project Management, Regulatory Compliance, Risk Assessments, Stakeholder Communications, Strategic Planning