Senior Backend Software Engineer
Builds and maintains backend services for an AI-driven marketing automation platform that optimizes restaurant delivery orders across third-party platforms.
- Compensation
- $167K–$230K / yr
- Location
- Seattle, WA
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Senior
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Backend
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Proficiency in a general-purpose backend language (e.g., Java, Go, or Python).
- Solid foundation in distributed systems, microservices, and API design (gRPC and/or REST).
- Experience with databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, CockroachDB) and writing performant queries.
- Strong debugging skills and an instinct for reliability in systems that integrate with unpredictable third parties.
- Experience operating services in production, and a collaborative, product-minded approach.
Nice to have
- Workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal, Cadence) or event-driven architectures (Kafka).
- Large-scale data and analytics tooling (Trino, Flink, Iceberg, or equivalent).
- ML systems in production, predictions, ranking, or optimization, or a strong interest in them.
- Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and containers (Docker, Kubernetes)
Full description
Who we are
In the past, to be a successful restaurateur, you simply had to have a passion for food and a passion for people - but to succeed as a digital restaurateur you also need to have a passion for technology. We believe in the joy of serving others, and that's why we created Otter – to help restaurateurs succeed in online food delivery. Restaurants around the world, both large and small, including Chick-fil-A, Ben & Jerry’s, KFC, and Eataly trust our software to power their delivery business. We increase sales, reduce order issues, and decrease delivery headaches.
What you’ll do
As a Software Engineer on the Otter Marketing/Boost team, you’ll build the AI-powered platform that puts restaurant growth on autopilot, automating marketing for each storefront across delivery platforms. Your code will turn a merchant’s budget and goals into real orders.
- Build backend services for campaign management, budgeting, and a multi-channel pipeline that deploys campaigns and keeps them in sync across delivery platforms.
- Develop the AI-driven Boost engine that analyzes each store, picks the best marketing for its goal, executes within budget, and recalibrates automatically.
- Build durable workflows for campaign orchestration, budget enforcement, and auto-pause guardrails that run correctly, every day, at scale.
- Integrate with third-party delivery platforms and handle the realities of external APIs: partial failures, retries, and reconciliation.
- Own your services end-to-end: develop, instrument, debug, and improve reliability and performance.
What we’re looking for
We value diversity of experience and are looking for engineers excited to own complex, high-impact systems. We look for a strong sense of ownership, people ready to take their work from idea to production and take responsibility for outcomes.
Basic Qualifications
- Proficiency in a general-purpose backend language (e.g., Java, Go, or Python).
- Solid foundation in distributed systems, microservices, and API design (gRPC and/or REST).
- Experience with databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, CockroachDB) and writing performant queries.
- Strong debugging skills and an instinct for reliability in systems that integrate with unpredictable third parties.
- Experience operating services in production, and a collaborative, product-minded approach.
Nice to Have
- Workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal, Cadence) or event-driven architectures (Kafka).
- Large-scale data and analytics tooling (Trino, Flink, Iceberg, or equivalent).
- ML systems in production, predictions, ranking, or optimization, or a strong interest in them.