Senior Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

Rokt group; New York (NY); On-site; USD 200,000 - 315,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative firm is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect and scale backend services for a leading ecommerce platform. This role involves designing distributed systems that handle billions of transactions, optimizing performance, and leveraging AI tools to enhance development. As part of a dynamic team, you will mentor junior engineers and collaborate with cross-functional partners to ensure system reliability and scalability. Join a culture that values transparency, diversity, and continuous improvement, where your contributions will shape the future of ecommerce technology.

Benefits

Equity grants

Catered lunch

401K matching plan

Generous health benefits

Dog-friendly office

Extra leave

Flexible working hours

Annual training allowance

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building production-grade distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Go or Java with understanding of concurrency and data structures.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement distributed systems and backend APIs for billions of transactions.
• Drive performance optimizations and mentor junior engineers.

Skills

Go

Java

Distributed Systems

Concurrency

Data Structures

Algorithms

API Design

System Observability

Incident Response

Fault-Tolerant Architectures

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD Tooling

Job description

We are Rokt, a hyper-growth ecommerce leader.Rokt is the global leader in ecommerce, unlocking real-time relevance in the moment that matters most. Rokt’s AI Brain and ecommerce Network powers billions of transactions connecting hundreds of millions of customers, and is trusted to do this by the world’s leading companies.

We are a team of builders helping smart businesses find innovative ways to meet customer needs and generate incremental revenue. Leading companies drive 10-50% of additional revenue—and often all their profits—from the extra products or services they sell. This economic edge unleashes a world of possibilities for growth and innovation.

The Rokt engineering team builds best-in-class ecommerce technology that provides personalized and relevant experiences for customers globally and empowers marketers with sophisticated, AI-driven tooling to understand consumers better. Our bespoke platform handles millions of transactions per day. It considers billions of data points which give engineers the opportunity to build technology at scale, collaborate across teams, and gain exposure to a wide range of technology.

At Rokt, we practice transparency in career paths and compensation.At Rokt, we believe in transparency, which is why we have a well-defined career ladder with transparent compensation and clear career paths based on competency and ability. Rokt’stars constantly strive to raise the bar, pushing the envelope of what is possible.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

Target total compensation of $300,000 - $515,000, including a fixed annual salary of $200,000 - $315,000, an employee equity plan grant, and world-class benefits.

Equity grants are issued in good faith, subject to company policies, board approval, and individual eligibility.

We are looking for a Software Engineer with deep experience in distributed systems to join our team in New York City. You will architect, build, and scale backend services that power critical systems across Rokt's ecommerce platform. You’ll work on systems that demand low latency, high throughput, and rock-solid reliability—while leveraging AI tools to accelerate development, improve resilience, and increase autonomy.

As an engineer, you will drive projects from design through delivery, mentoring others and contributing to our engineering best practices. You’ll partner cross-functionally with Product, ML, and SRE to ensure performance and scalability as Rokt continues to scale globally.

What You’ll Do

• Design and implement distributed systems and backend APIs that scale to billions of transactions per year.
• Own architectural decisions and contribute to system design reviews and incident root cause analyses.
• Drive performance optimizations and refactors to improve system reliability, latency, and cost.
• Leverage AI/ML frameworks and tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Datadog AI, etc.) to speed up delivery and reduce toil.
• Mentor junior engineers and set technical direction for the team on scalability and observability best practices.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to align engineering delivery with business objectives.

• At least 5 years of experience building production-grade distributed systems at scale.
• Proficiency in Go, Java, or similar backend languages, and strong understanding of concurrency, data structures, and algorithms.
• Experience designing APIs
• Strong command of system observability, incident response, and fault-tolerant architectures.
• Familiarity with cloud-native stacks (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform) and CI/CD tooling.
• Effective communicator and mentor; able to lead discussions and influence design decisions.
• Excited by Rokt’s AI-first culture, and eager to raise the bar across architecture, delivery, and engineering culture.

About Rokt’stars:

As a mission-driven, hyper-growth community of curious explorers, our ambition is to unlock real-time relevancy in ecommerce and beyond. Our bias for action means we are not afraid to quickly venture into uncharted territories, take risks, or challenge the status quo; in doing so we either win or learn. We work together as one aligned team never letting egos get in the way of brilliant ideas. We value diversity, transparency, and smart humble people who enjoy building a disruptive business together. We pride ourselves on being a force for good as we make the world better.

About the Benefits:

We leverage best-in-class technology and market-leading innovation in AI and ML, with all of that being underlined by building and maintaining a fantastic and inclusive culture where people can be their authentic selves, and offering a great list of perks and benefits to go with it:

• Accelerate your career. We offer roadmaps to leadership and an annual training allowance
• Become a shareholder. Every Rokt’star gets equity in the company
• Enjoy catered lunch every day and healthy snacks in the office.
• Access generous retirement plans like a 4% dollar-for-dollar 401K matching plan and great health benefits for you and your dependents.
• Dog-friendly office
• Extra leave (bonus annual leave, sabbatical leave etc.)
• Work with the greatest talent in town
• See the world! We have offices in New York, Seattle, Sydney, Tokyo and London

We believe we’re better together. We love spending time together and are in the office most days (teams are in the office 4 days per week). We also get that you need to balance your life and your commitments so you have the flexibility to manage your own hours and can spend up to a week of every quarter working from anywhere.

We at Rokt choose to create a company that is as diverse and inclusive as the world we live in by attracting, growing & keeping the best talent. Equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

If this sounds like a role you’d enjoy, apply here, and you’ll hear from our recruiting team.