Sr Software Engineer - Playlist

Playlist; United States; On-site; USD 151,275 - 251,200; Full time

Job summary

Playlist seeks a senior backend engineer to design and operate distributed systems at scale, collaborating with product and design to bring features from ideation to deployment. You will own service design across boundaries, model data thoughtfully, and ensure reliability through testing and observability.

You’ll mentor teammates and advance responsible AI tooling usage. The role emphasizes building robust APIs, practical system design, and delivering high-quality software with a strong focus on

Qualifications

• 8+ years building and operating backend systems for high-traffic products.
• Strong system design skills across distributed systems, latency, throughput, and failure modes.
• Experience designing service-oriented architectures (microservices or modular monoliths).
• Proficient in OO languages (Java/Kotlin/C#) with solid SDLC and Agile practices.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product and Design to deliver features from ideation through deployment.
• Design and ship backend services and APIs end-to-end, owning system design and architecture decisions.
• Model and store data thoughtfully: schema design, indexing, migrations, and performance tuning.
• Promote engineering excellence with automated testing, code reviews, and observability.
• Mentor teammates and raise the bar for engineering rigor and responsible AI usage.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

OO languages (Java/Kotlin/C#)

SDLC & Agile

AI tooling mindset

Tools

SpringBoot

NetCore

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

DynamoDB

Redis

CI/CD tooling

JUnit/Mockito/TestContainers

Job description

About the Company

At Playlist, life's richest moments happen when people step away from screens to move, connect, explore, and play. We're building the definitive platform for intentional living, connecting people with inspiring experiences in fitness, wellness, and beyond. With popular brands like Mindbody and ClassPass, Playlist empowers businesses and individuals, making it effortless for aspirations to become actions. Join us in reshaping technology's role to foster meaningful, real-world connections.

• Runtime & tooling: gradle, monorepos, CI/CD
• Observability: metrics/logging/tracing; New Relic/Datadog/Kibana/Grafana

The Role You'll Play

You'll build and operate the backend systems that power Playlist. This is a senior, hands-on role focused on distributed systems, data modeling, and pragmatic system design—delivering reliable services at scale while keeping the architecture simple and maintainable. You'll also operate at the edge of what's possible by leveraging AI (LLMs and agentic tooling) to accelerate delivery, improve quality, and push system capabilities forward.

• Partner with Product and Design to deliver features from ideation through deployment, iterating based on feedback and outcomes
• Design and ship backend services and APIs end-to-end, owning system design and architecture decisions across service boundaries, data ownership, consistency models, failure modes, and others
• Model and store data thoughtfully: schema design, indexing/partitioning, migrations, and performance tuning
• Promote engineering excellence by driving simplicity, strengthening operational health, and upholding quality through automated testing, code reviews, and monitoring/observability
• Mentor teammates and raise the bar for engineering rigor and clarity, including best practices for responsible AI usage

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years building and operating backend systems for high-traffic and high-reliability products
• Strong system design skills across distributed systems (latency, throughput, durability, backpressure, idempotency, retries, timeouts)
• Deep understanding of data modeling and persistence (relational and/or NoSQL), including tradeoffs around normalization, transactions, and consistency
• Experience designing service-oriented architectures (microservices or modular monoliths), including service-to-service communication patterns
• Solid CS fundamentals and engineering judgment, proficiency in an OO language (e.g., Java/Kotlin/C#), and a solid understanding of SDLC and Agile methodologies
• AI-native builder mindset with strong judgment; understanding of AI tooling such as MCPs, evals, RAG are good to have
• Strong communication and collaboration across functions

Tools and Systems

You don't need experience with every item below - what matters is strong fundamentals and the ability to learn quickly.

• Languages and Frameworks: Java/Kotlin/C#, SpringBoot/NetCore. async/concurrency, RPC/REST
• Data: PostgreSQL/MongoDB/DynamoDB, Redis, schema migrations, indexing, partitioning/sharding
• Runtime & tooling: gradle, monorepos, CI/CD
• Testing: unit/integration/e2e testing (JUnit/Mockito/TestContainers)
• Observability: metrics/logging/tracing; New Relic/Datadog/Kibana/Grafana
• AI tooling: Claude Code/ Cursor/ Codex-style coding assistants; MCPs; agent/orchestration frameworks; safety harnesses
• Engineering Practices: automated testing, code reviews, CI/CD, observability, on-call, incident management - with AI-accelerated workflows where appropriate

It is the Company’s intent to pay all Team Members competitive wages and salaries that are fair and equitable. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors unique to each candidate, including skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and work location. The goal of Company's compensation program is to be transparent, attract potential employees, meet the needs of all current employees, and encourage Team Members to stay with our organization.

The base salary range for this position in the United States is $151,275 to $251,200. The total compensation package may also include a performance bonus, benefits, and other applicable incentive compensation plans.

The Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We highly value diversity at our company and encourage people of all different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or other protected characteristics.

Note: This description outlines key responsibilities but isn't intended to cover every task or duty. Additional responsibilities may be assigned as needed to support the team and business goals.