Staff Software Engineer, Product

Customer.io; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

100% medical, dental, vision coverage

16 weeks paid parental leave

Unlimited PTO and wellness stipends

Professional development budget

Job summary

Customer.io is seeking a Staff Product Engineer who thinks like a product owner and ships like an engineer. You will own high-impact problems end-to-end, partner with product and data teams, and drive architecture, performance, and reliability across the stack.

You’ll lead cross-team initiatives, mentor peers, and apply AI judiciously to improve workflows and outcomes while maintaining a customer-first focus. A competitive salary and comprehensive benefits accompany the role.

Qualifications

• Proven track record leading complex work across teams with customer impact.
• Strong backend engineering experience and ability to influence end-to-end decisions.
• Product judgment with clarity when path forward is unclear.
• Ability to mentor teams and drive architectural decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own ambiguous, impact-driven problems from framing to launch and iteration.
• Partner with product, design, and data to shape priorities and success metrics.
• Lead technical decisions across stack, focusing on architecture, performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Coordinate cross-team work to maintain momentum on complex initiatives.
• Mentor engineers and promote reusable patterns and clear technical guidance.
• Apply AI thoughtfully across the development lifecycle and improve workflows.

Skills

Backend engineering

Product ownership

Cross-team collaboration

AI in software development

Mentorship

On-call readiness

Tools

Go

React

Job description

Hi, I'm Paul, VP of Engineering at Customer.io . We're looking for a staff product engineer — not a generalist who happens to touch frontend and backend, but someone who thinks like a product owner and ships like an engineer.

Over 9,000 companies — from scrappy startups to global brands — use our platform to send billions of emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS every day. Customer.io powers automated communication that people actually want to receive.

We help teams send smarter, more relevant messages using real-time behavioral data. Under the hood: Go, React, and AI help us ship fast and scale with confidence.

What We Value

End-to-end ownership

You take on the problems nobody's claimed — the ones that span squads with no obvious owner — and carry them from a fuzzy first conversation to what's actually live. If it touches the customer, it's yours to chase down.

Half-formed problems and conflicting signals are your starting material, not a blocker. You define the problem before you solve it, form a point of view on what's worth building, and move without waiting for someone else to de-risk the call.

Customer-first, always

You think from the customer's problem backward, not the codebase forward. Every technical call traces back to what it does for the person on the other end of the message — and you can explain that connection to people who don't write code. Given the choice, you ship the thing that changes their experience, not the thing that's merely elegant.

A healthy skepticism for "the way things are done"

You retire practices that have outlived their usefulness, including ones you helped build. Best practices matter — but never more than forward motion.

Force multiplication

Shipping your part isn't the bar. You bring in the right people before a problem becomes theirs to clean up, and you leave enough behind — docs, patterns, delegation — that the team keeps moving without you in the room.

What You'll Do

• Own important, ambiguous problems from initial framing through launch and iteration. Set direction, align partners, and stay accountable for the result.
• Partner with product, design, and data to shape priorities, scope the work, and define how success will be measured.
• Lead technical decisions across the stack, including architecture, performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Lead work across teams and systems. Build alignment, resolve technical disagreements, and keep complex initiatives moving.
• Improve engineering practices through mentorship, reusable patterns, and clear technical guidance.
• Use AI throughout your engineering work, with sound judgment about where it helps, where it falls short, and how its output should be reviewed. Help the team improve by testing new workflows, sharing what works, and identifying useful opportunities for automation.
• Participate in an on-call rotation as required, supporting the systems the team builds.

What we're looking for

• A track record of leading complex work across teams or systems and delivering meaningful customer, business, or engineering outcomes.
• Strong backend engineering experience, with the ability to work across the stack and lead end-to-end technical decisions.
• Strong product and technical judgment, especially when the problem or path forward is unclear.
• The ability to influence experienced peers and align teams without formal authority.
• Experience using metrics, experimentation, and observability to guide decisions and improve production systems.
• Regular, hands-on use of AI across the software development lifecycle, with the judgment to adapt as tools change while remaining accountable for quality, security, and outcomes. Experience improving how a broader team uses AI is a strong plus.

We believe in transparency. Starting salary for this role is $200,000 - $280,000 USD (or equivalent in local currency) depending on experience and subject to market rate adjustment. This role also carries a 10% annual bonus target.

We know our people are what make us great, and we're committed to taking great care of them. Our inclusive benefits package supports your well-being and growth, including 100% coverage of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and supplemental insurance premiums for you and your family. We also offer 16 weeks paid parental leave, unlimited PTO, stipends for remote work and wellness, a professional development budget, and more.

No gotchas, no trick questions - just a clear, human process designed to help both of us make an informed decision.

All final candidates will be asked to complete a background check and employment verifications as part of our pre-employment process.

Customer.io recognizes the stifling impact of systemic injustice on diverse communities. We commit to using our influence to increase inclusion and equity within the tech industry. We strive to build an inclusive team culture, implement bias-free hiring practices, and develop community partnerships to expand our global impact.

Zoom is the only video conference platform that we use, virtual interviews will be conducted using the video capability (i.e., not via the chat), and offers will be extended in writing on official Customer.io letterhead. Please be vigilant in all of your job search activity, and if you have any questions please contact [e-mail] .

Because of this, we’re not able to offer visa sponsorship or relocation support at this time.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Customer.io’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

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