Software Engineer - Backend Platform

Hi, I’m Manu, Engineering Manager at Customer.io. We’re looking for experienced backend engineers who want to build and own the infrastructure that powers one of the most data-intensive platforms in marketing automation - systems that process millions of events per second, orchestrate complex workflows at scale, and keep everything running reliably for thousands of customers worldwide.

You’ll work on the Platform team, tackling hard distributed systems problems: designing for fault tolerance, scaling services under real production pressure, and building the foundational layers that every other team at Customer.io depends on. This isn’t just maintenance work - you’ll shape the architecture of systems that need to be both highly available and constantly evolving.

If you’re someone who gets energized by the intersection of scale, reliability, and developer experience - and wants ownership over infrastructure that truly matters - we’d love to talk., You drive technical direction across systems and teams. You move with urgency, build with empathy, and think long-term. You’ve led large-scale infrastructure initiatives and know what it takes to get them over the line.

Engineers with customer focus

You think about how infrastructure unlocks customer value. You care about developer experience, system design, and how your work shapes the customer experience.

A healthy disregard for “the way things are done”

You bring rigor and creativity. Best practices matter, but never more than forward motion.

What You’ll Do

• Design and evolve distributed systems in Go to handle billions of daily events and messages and store and index petabytes of data
• Lead architectural decisions around performance, reliability, and real-time event processing
• Improve service-to-service communication through better APIs, messaging systems, and event-driven patterns
• Work across teams to uncover bottlenecks and system issues, and lead initiatives to resolve them for a smoother customer experience
• Tackle high-throughput challenges across data pipelines, queues, and scheduling infrastructure
• Able to debug production systems at scale using effective instrumentation, and resolve issues quickly and confidently
• Share knowledge and raise the bar through sharing your progress publicly with short videos, thoughtful writing, and mentorship
• Leverage AI tools to prototype, move faster, and make better decisions, * Hiring Manager Interview (60 mins) - Talk with one of our hiring managers about your working style and a project you’ve owned end-to-end, plus a short AI-assisted coding exercise.
• System Design Interview (60 mins) - A collaborative system design conversation focused on scaling challenges.
• Coding Interview (60 mins) - Pair with one of our engineers for an agentic live coding interview.

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., This should be the location you plan to consider your primary residence and are legally authorized to work in. Were you referred to this position by a current or former team member? If so, please list their name below.* LinkedIn Profile Have you previously been employed with Customer.io? * Select… If you have previously been employed with Customer.io, please provide the department or role that you had. Do you currently work for, or have you worked for, a company or partner agency that uses Customer.io in the past 2 years?* Select… If you answered “Yes” to the question above, please list the company or partner agency name(s).*

If you have not, please answer N/A Are you authorized to work in country of residence?* Select… Will you require work authorization/visa sponsorship?* Select…

As a remote company, we hire across many locations, but we do have policies and team needs that influence where we can support employment. 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 hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential 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. Gender Select… Are you Hispanic/Latino? Select… Race & Ethnicity Definitions

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 measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is 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.

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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. Veteran Status Select…

• Deep experience with distributed systems and large-scale backend architecture
• Strong instincts around reliability, observability, and fault tolerance
• Comfort reasoning about performance, capacity, and trade-offs at scale
• Experience with event-driven systems, message queues, or data pipelines is a plus
• A collaborative mindset - you raise the team around you, * Significant experience (typically 10+ years) building scalable, distributed systems in Go (or similar statically typed languages)
• Deep experience with databases - relational (MySQL, Postgres) and non-relational (DynamoDB, BigTable) - and how to make them fast
• Comfort working in cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP)
• Familiarity with APIs, observability, and operating production systems
• A bias for action over perfection, and pride in owning technical decisions

We believe in transparency. Starting salary for this role is $150,000 - $200,000 USD (or equivalent in local currency) depending on experience and subject to market rate adjustment.

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.