Staff Back End Engineer- TQM

Forma.ai; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock option plan

Healthcare coverage

$750 training stipend

Job summary

Forma.ai is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the TQM team, shaping the Territory and Quota Management planning layer of our platform. You will design enterprise features, balance product and technical judgements, and guide delivery across frontend and backend systems used by large sales organizations.

You will lead core architecture decisions, collaborate with customers and teams, and stay hands-on to ensure production-grade outcomes in an AI-enabled development environment.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building and running production systems, including leading the design of a product area or platform.
• Proficiency in Kotlin, Java, or a similar language, and comfort working across the stack, including a TypeScript and React frontend.
• Strong SQL, relational schema design, and data modelling skills, including data models that had to change over many years.
• A track record of good technical judgement. You can describe major decisions, what you rejected, and how they held up.
• A track record of good product judgement. You have shaped what was built, and you can explain how you weighed customer value, cost, and risk.
• Experience talking with customers or customer-facing teams and turning what you learn into product decisions.
• Regular and critical use of AI coding tools, and a clear view on how a team should work with them.
• Clear, precise writing. You do not expect others to read AI output. Your audience will put in as much effort reading your docs as you do writing them.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of TQM’s enterprise features, including permissions, audit history, and approval workflows.
• Care about the product experience, working on both frontend and backend towards the goal of delivering strong experiences.
• Design these features so that new product areas can use them without rebuilding them.
• Learn from customers how planning is governed inside their organizations and turn that into a clear plan for delivery.
• Decide what not to build. Cut scope that doesn’t serve a customer, and say so clearly.
• Set the technical direction for how these features connect to the rest of the Forma.ai platform.
• Write the design documents and decision records that the team builds from, and review others’ with a high bar.
• Stay hands-on. Build the hardest parts yourself and make sure the result works in production.
• Contribute heavily to product ideation discussions, and bring opinions.

Skills

Kotlin

Java

TypeScript

React

SQL

Data modeling

Product judgment

Customer collaboration

AI coding tools

Writing

Tools

PostgreSQL

Spring Boot

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

OpenTofu

TanStack Router

React tooling

Job description

About Forma.ai:

Forma.ai is a Series B startup that’s revolutionizing how sales compensation is designed, managed and optimized. We handle billions in annual managed commissions for market leaders like Edmentum, Stryker, and Autodesk.

Our growth has been fuelled by our passion for fundamentally changing and shaping how companies use sales intelligence to drive business strategy.

We’re welcoming equally driven individuals who are excited about creating something big!

About the Team

We build enterprise software that helps organizations optimize sales performance and improve go‑to‑market agility. Our engineering organization includes multiple product application teams responsible for delivering core customer‑facing capabilities.

We are seeking Staff Software Engineers to join our TQM team. You’ll work alongside other staff, senior, and early‑career engineers to design, build, and scale backend and frontend systems that power enterprise‑grade product workflows. This is an opportunity to work on complex product and data problems while contributing meaningfully to technical decisions, system quality, and team delivery.

We are low on meetings and high on accountability. Most of the team is in the EST time zone, with a few located in AST, PST, and Central as well.

What you’ll be doing

The TQM team builds the planning layer of Forma.ai’s platform. TQM stands for Territory and Quota Management. Sales operations teams use it to plan the deployment of large scale sales organizations: divide their target market among sellers, set and communicate targets, and manage changes during the year. Commissions, crediting, and reporting all depend on our data.

We build with AI tools every day, so writing code is rarely what slows us down. What matters more is how often a person makes the right call. For the staff role at Forma, that means strong product judgement as well strong technical judgement. You will decide what problem to solve, which customer request shows a real pattern and which is a one‑off, how to actually build and deliver software at a high velocity in the new AI world, and how to build a system will hold up for years. The team’s direction will depend heavily on how well you make those calls.

You will:

• Lead the design of TQM’s enterprise features, including permissions, audit history, and approval workflows.
• You care about the product experience, working on both frontend and backend towards the goal of delivering strong experiences.
• Design these features so that new product areas can use them without rebuilding them.
• Learn from customers how planning is governed inside their organizations and turn that into a clear plan for delivery.
• Decide what not to build. Cut scope that doesn’t serve a customer, and say so clearly.
• Set the technical direction for how these features connect to the rest of the Forma.ai platform.
• Write the design documents and decision records that the team builds from, and review others’ with a high bar.
• Stay hands‑on. Build the hardest parts yourself and make sure the result works in production.
• Contribute heavily to product ideation discussions, and bring opinions.

What we’re looking for

• Extensive experience building and running production systems, including leading the design of a product area or platform.
• Proficiency in Kotlin, Java, or a similar language, and comfort working across the stack, including a TypeScript and React frontend.
• Strong SQL, relational schema design, and data modelling skills, including data models that had to change over many years.
• A track record of good technical judgement. You can describe major decisions, what you rejected, and how they held up.
• A track record of good product judgement. You have shaped what was built, and you can explain how you weighed customer value, cost, and risk.
• Experience talking with customers or customer‑facing teams and turning what you learn into product decisions.
• Regular and critical use of AI coding tools, and a clear view on how a team should work with them.
• Clear, precise writing. You do not expect others to read AI output. Your audience will put in as much effort reading your docs as you do writing them.

Nice to have

• Experience with rule‑driven systems, validation workflows, or approval and governance features.
• Exposure to Sales Performance Management, RevOps, Incentive Compensation, or financial planning.
• Experience with analytical databases or large‑scale data processing.
• Familiarity with AWS and Kubernetes.

Technologies we use

Frontend: TypeScript, React, TanStack Router and Query, Tailwind, shadcn/ui

Backend: Kotlin, Spring Boot, Postgres

Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenTofu

Development: AI coding agents (Codex/Claude Code), used throughout design, implementation, and review

What success looks like: 30/60/90 days

First 30 days

You’ll learn TQM by working in it, and learn what enterprise customers need from it.

By the end of your first 30 days, you will have:

• Set up your environment and learned your way around the services, web app, and infrastructure.
• Shipped several changes to the production system, across more than one area of the product.
• Read the team’s domain and design documents and learned the core planning concepts.
• Spoken with product owners and customer‑facing teams about enterprise requirements.
• Shared an initial view of where the current system falls short of those requirements.

First 60 days

You’ll set the direction for the enterprise features.

By the end of your first 60 days, you will have:

• Led the design of the permission model and the plan for audit history and approvals, from problem statement to an agreed design.
• Changed the scope or order of that work based on customer evidence.
• Got engineers building on the design, with the first pieces in review or in production.
• Improved how the team designs, reviews, or tests its work.

First 90 days

You’ll be the engineer the team relies on for direction.

By the end of your first 90 days, you will have:

• Delivered the first enterprise features to production, used by customers in their planning.
• Made decisions that Product and Engineering both trust without needing to revisit them.
• Started contributing to the direction of new product areas.

Additional Info:

• This position is for an existing vacancy

What you can expect from us

• Meaningful compensation. In addition to your base salary, you’ll join our employee stock ownership plan to further recognize your contributions to Forma.ai’s success.
• Healthcare coverage. We have a full benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance, and a paid parental leave program.
• Learning and development. Access the resources you want to help you grow in your role by utilizing our $750 yearly training stipend.
• Growth. You’ll have a huge opportunity to build a career for yourself and gain the type of experience you’re looking for, whether that’s as an individual contributor or as a people leader.

Our Values:

• Work well, together. We’re real. We have kids and pets. Mortgages and student loans. We’re in this together, so no matter how brilliant any one of us is, we always play nice with one another – no exceptions.
• Be precise. Be relentless. We believe complacency breeds failure, so we set new goals as quickly as we achieve them. We persist in the face of adversity, learn from our mistakes, and push each other to continuously improve. The status‑quo is kryptonite.
• Love our tech. Love our customers. Our platform solves a very complex problem in a currently underserved market. While everyone at Forma isn’t customer‑facing, we’re all customer‑focused. Maybe even slightly customer‑obsessed.

Use of AI for Recruitment

Currently, Forma.ai does not use artificial intelligence as part of our recruitment process, specifically but not limited to the screening, filtering and shortlisting of applicants.

Our commitment to you:

Forma is a proud equal opportunity employer that is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive work environment.Every effort to accommodate candidates for accessibility will be made upon request. Information received related to accommodations will be addressed confidentially. We know that applying to a new role takes a lot of effort. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description. There are many paths to a successful career and we’re looking forward to reading yours.

We thank all candidates for their interest however only qualified applicants will be shortlisted.