Staff Software Engineer, Backend

customerio; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Sixteen weeks paid parental leave

Unlimited PTO

Remote work stipend

Wellness stipend

Professional development budget

Healthcare premiums for family

Job summary

customerio is seeking a staff-level backend engineer to shape the architectural direction of distributed messaging systems processing billions of emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS daily. The role emphasizes architectural decisions, mentorship, and raising the technical ceiling across the engineering organization.

You will set strategy for Go services, own cross-squad problems, build consensus on tradeoffs, and drive improvements in observability and reliability.

Qualifications

• Ten+ years building scalable, distributed systems in Go or similar statically typed language.
• Depth across multiple systems or domains, not a single specialty.
• Designing for production reality by quantifying tradeoffs in throughput, cost, and reliability.
• Observability and recovery as first-class concerns: metrics, alerting, rollback, backpressure, checkpointing.
• Experience in cloud-native environments (AWS or GCP) with relational databases and performance tradeoffs.
• Mentorship, technical writing, design reviews, and craft standards that outlast involvement.
• Bias for action with judgment on when to slow down for the right decisions.

Responsibilities

• Set high-level technical direction for distributed messaging services written in Go.
• Own ambiguous, cross-squad problems and drive decisive resolutions.
• Build consensus on technical tradeoffs and communicate to senior leadership.
• Raise the department’s bar through quality, design standards, and mentoring.
• Improve engineering processes and tooling spanning multiple squads.
• Interview engineers and calibrate against the engineering career ladder.
• Use AI agents to perform multi-file changes by scoping work, writing prompts, and verifying outputs.

Skills

Go

Distributed systems

Mentorship

Technical writing

Architecture leadership

Tools

AWS

GCP

Relational databases

Job description

Role overview

A staff-level backend engineering role shaping the technical direction of distributed messaging systems that deliver billions of emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS each day. The position focuses less on shipping volume and more on high-stakes architectural decisions, mentorship, and raising the technical ceiling for the wider engineering organization.

Responsibilities

• Set high-level technical direction for distributed messaging services written in Go, balancing scale, cost, and reliability for mission-critical workloads.
• Take ownership of ambiguous, cross-squad problems and drive them to decisions when the right answer is not yet obvious.
• Build consensus on contested technical questions and communicate tradeoffs clearly enough for senior leadership to act on.
• Raise the department's bar through quality and design standards, mentorship of senior engineers, and durable documentation and frameworks.
• Drive engineering process and tooling improvements that span multiple squads rather than a single team.
• Interview candidates and calibrate against the engineering career ladder using honest, evidence-based assessments.
• Use AI agents to perform multi-file changes by scoping work, writing prompts, and verifying outputs.

Requirements

• Ten or more years building scalable, distributed systems in Go or a similar statically typed language, including time as the go-to architect on complex services.
• Recognized depth across multiple systems or domains rather than a single specialty.
• A track record of designing for production reality by quantifying tradeoffs in throughput, cost, and reliability.
• Experience treating observability and recovery as first-class concerns, including metrics, alerting, rollback, backpressure, and checkpointing.
• Comfort working in cloud-native environments such as AWS or GCP, with relational databases and a real understanding of performance tradeoffs.
• Evidence of making other engineers better through mentorship, technical writing, design review, and standards that outlast direct involvement.
• A bias for action over perfection, with the judgment to know which decisions are worth slowing down for.

Benefits and work setup

• Starting salary of approximately $200,000 to $240,000 USD (or local equivalent), plus a 10 percent annual bonus target.
• 100 percent coverage of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and supplemental insurance premiums for employees and their families.
• Sixteen weeks of paid parental leave, unlimited PTO, remote work and wellness stipends, a professional development budget, and additional perks.
• Structured interview process with a recruiter call, hiring manager interview, architecture conversation, take-home assignment, and assignment review call, plus standard pre-employment background checks.