Staff Backend Software Engineer

Join Kargo as a Staff Backend Software Engineer, where you'll own the technical direction across backend services and shared platform capabilities. You'll translate ambiguous business needs into durable architecture and reliable execution, ensuring that our systems operate efficiently at scale. Your success will be measured by improved architecture alignment, operational integrity of major initiatives, measurable platform health improvements, increased engineering effectiveness, and the growth of senior engineers into broader ownership roles.

• Ownership of technical direction across backend services and shared platform capabilities, translating business needs into durable architecture.
• Leading complex, cross-team technical initiatives from problem definition through production rollout, ensuring operational integrity.
• Improving platform health and engineering effectiveness across teams through targeted refactors, new reference implementations, or infrastructure investments.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-team technical initiatives from problem definition through production rollout
• Deep proficiency in Go (or comparable systems/compiled language) with production experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems
• Strong systems design fundamentals: APIs, service architecture, concurrency, data modeling, fault tolerance, and performance
• Operational instincts across monitoring, debugging, incident response, and systemic follow-through
• Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS in production environments
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders
• Familiarity with RTB, SSP, or auction systems — or other performance-sensitive distributed platforms where latency, throughput, and cost must be actively balanced
• Experience building shared internal platforms or frameworks adopted across multiple engineering teams
• Actively invests in the development of senior engineers, helping them take on broader technical ownership and influence
• Identifies systemic risk early and makes sound calls on whether to patch, refactor, or redesign
• Treats observability, incident management, and post-launch iteration as first-class parts of the engineering process, not afterthoughts
• Knows when to move fast, when to invest, and when to hold — and can articulate the reasoning to engineers and stakeholders alike
• Establishes reusable patterns and reference implementations that other engineers actually adopt because they're genuinely useful
• Takes loosely defined product or business problems and produces clear, actionable technical plans without waiting for full clarity
• Leads design reviews and technical discussions that bring teams to strong decisions without relying on formal authority or slowing down momentum
• Stays close enough to the code to lead by example and make high-leverage contributions when it counts
• Competencies — Behaviors We Like to See:
• Translates Ambiguity Into Direction:
• Raises the Bar Without Holding Court:
• Operates With Production Discipline:
• Grows the People Around Them: