Software Engineer, Foundations

frontcareers; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Front is seeking a Backend Software Engineer for the Foundations team. You’ll build and maintain shared backend frameworks, libraries, and internal tooling used by Front’s engineering teams, focusing on reliability, observability, and performance across the system stack.

You’ll own CI/CD systems, collaborate with multiple teams to standardize patterns, and influence backend architecture. This role targets engineers who thrive in fast-paced, builder-focused environments and relish solving complex

Qualifications

• Backend JavaScript/TypeScript engineering experience.
• Experience building frameworks, libraries, and/or developer-facing internal tools.
• Experience building distributed systems with reliability, observability, and performance.
• Strong software design fundamentals and track record of high-complexity projects.
• Clear, structured thinking and strong communication with engineers.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity in a fast-paced environment.
• Comfort thriving in a dynamic, collaborative, low-ego, high-growth setting.

Responsibilities

• Building and maintaining shared backend frameworks, libraries, and internal tooling used by engineering teams across Front.
• Designing and implementing systems with emphasis on reliability, observability, and performance—task queue, batch job framework, ORM, and real-time events infrastructure.
• Owning and evolving CI/CD systems for fast, reliable delivery pipelines.
• Collaborating with other engineering teams to understand pain points and drive adoption of new frameworks.
• Influencing Front's backend architecture and engineering-wide standards.
• Navigating ambiguity, defining the right problems to solve, delivering complex solutions.

Skills

Backend JS/TS

Frameworks/Libraries

Distributed Systems

Software Design

Communication

Ambiguity

Teamwork

Job description

Front is the customer operations platform built for B2B complexity, keeping every team, tool, and customer conversation in sync so companies can scale without losing connection. Others handle simple interactions. Front handles the coordination and context behind complex B2B customer relationships. Over 9,000 companies, including Uber Freight, Navan, and Stripe, rely on Front because it's the only one that can run the operational layer that makes customer-facing work actually succeed. Backed by Sequoia Capital and Salesforce Ventures, Front has raised $204M from leading venture capital firms and independent investors including top executives at Atlassian, Okta, Qualtrics, Zoom, and PagerDuty. Front has received numerous Great Place to Work accolades, including Built In's 100 Best Midsize Places to Work in SF 2025 , Top Places to Work by USA Today 2025 , Y Combinator's list of Top Companies in 2023 , #4 on Fortune's Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™ , Inc. Magazine's 2022 Best Workplaces list , and Forbes Best Startup Employers 2022 List . Front is a customer operations platform that helps teams work better together. At the core of everything we build is the Foundations team - the engineers who make it possible for the rest of engineering to move fast and build with confidence. This team owns the frameworks, libraries, and internal systems that power Front's backend, from our event-driven task queue to our CI/CD infrastructure and database ORM. As a Software Engineer on the Foundations team, you'll work at the intersection of platform engineering and developer experience. You won't be building features end users click on - you'll be building the systems that make those features possible. If you're energized by designing for scale, eliminating friction across engineering teams, and setting the architectural patterns that an entire company relies on, this role is for you.

What will you be doing?

• Building and maintaining shared backend frameworks, libraries, and internal tooling used by engineering teams across Front
• Designing and implementing systems with a strong emphasis on reliability, observability, and performance - including our task queue, batch job framework, database ORM, and real-time event infrastructure
• Owning and evolving our CI/CD systems, ensuring fast, reliable, and safe delivery pipelines
• Collaborating closely with other engineering teams to understand their pain points, establish shared patterns, and drive adoption of new frameworks
• Influencing Front's backend architecture and the engineering-wide standards that flow from it
• Navigating ambiguity, defining the right problems to solve, and delivering solutions of significant complexity

What skills and experience do you need?

• We are looking for backend JavaScript/TypeScript engineers - this role is not focused on frontend development.
• Experience building frameworks, libraries, and/or developer-facing internal tools
• Experience building distributed systems with an emphasis on reliability, observability, and performance
• Exceptional software design fundamentals and a track record of delivering high-complexity projects
• Clear, structured thinking and strong communication skills - your stakeholders are other engineers, so the ability to explain technical tradeoffs matters
• Comfort navigating ambiguity: you can drive clarity and execute without a fully-defined roadmap
• Ability to thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced, collaborative, low-ego, and high-growth environment

Bonus points:

• Deep TypeScript performance optimization experience
• Prior work on platform or enablement teams at a product-led company

Why is this role special?

• You'll get exposure to a wide range of production systems - our task queue (event-driven architecture), database ORM, real-time events, CI/CD pipelines, and batch job framework
• You’ll heavily influence Front's backend architecture and the patterns used by the entire engineering org
• Your primary stakeholders are other engineering teams - you're building for builders
• Your work has compounding impact: improvements you make ripple across every team shipping customer-facing features

Front provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age or disability. By applying, you acknowledge and agree that you have read and understand the California Recruiting Privacy Notice & EU Privacy Notice