Job Description
Conversica is seeking a Senior Backend Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate the production backend systems that power our next-generation AI platform. This is an experienced individual contributor role focused on owning and delivering meaningful pieces of the platform layer: integrations, data ingestion, messaging infrastructure, orchestration, and the data foundations our agents depend on.
This role operates with strong autonomy within a clear technical direction. You will lead the implementation of significant platform components, make day-to-day technical decisions within your domain, and partner with Staff Engineers and tech leads on broader architectural calls.
What You’ll Do
- Own end-to-end delivery of significant backend platform components, taking work from design through production within an established architectural direction
- Lead implementation in a focused domain such as integrations, messaging infrastructure, data ingestion, or one of the core platform services
- Make day-to-day technical decisions within your domain on data modeling, API design, error handling, and operational concerns, partnering with the Staff Engineer and tech leads on broader architectural calls
- Partner closely with AI Engineering and Product to translate evolving requirements into reliable, well-tested software
- Drive reliability, performance, and observability improvements in the systems you own; respond to production issues and lead the fix
- Mentor mid-level and junior engineers on your team through code review, pairing, and design feedback; raise the bar on engineering craft within the team
- Contribute to platform-wide design discussions and influence the standards you operate under
What You’ll Build
- Integration platform: inbound and outbound data processors, partner APIs, webhook ingestion, CSV bulk imports, sync logic, and resilient retry/backoff patterns for unreliable external systems
- Messaging infrastructure: email (AWS SES), SMS (Twilio), and chat (OpenAI Chatkit) delivery pipelines including throughput management, deliverability, suppression, and audit trails
- Platform services: the Campaign, Playbook, Flows, Contact, Knowledge, and Reporting services that compose our domain model
- Data foundations: Postgres schema design, data models for contacts, conversations, campaigns, and configuration. Storage patterns optimized for both transactional workloads and agent retrieval
- Orchestration and event flows: FastAPI services, Celery workflows, EventBridge-driven event handling, queue management, and the action dispatch layer that executes agent decisions across CRM, calendar, and notification systems
Success in this Role
In your first 6 to 12 months in this role:
- You own and operate a significant platform domain in production, with the design decisions, code, and operational responsibility sitting with you.
- You’ve led the delivery of at least one significant platform feature from design through launch, partnering effectively with AI Engineering and Product along the way.
- You’ve raised the engineering craft on your team through code review, design feedback, and pairing, and the engineers around you are visibly better for it.
Qualifications and Experience
- Equivalent of 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant focus on backend platform, integrations, or data infrastructure work
- Track record of owning and delivering significant backend features or components in production, from design through operation
- Proven experience deploying and operating production backend systems at scale
- Strong proficiency in Python, including production experience with FastAPI, Celery, and similar async/queue-based frameworks
- Deep experience with Postgres including schema design, query optimization, and operating Postgres in production
- Experience working with large datasets and navigating real-world data quality challenges across heterogeneous source systems
- Experience designing and operating integrations with third-party SaaS systems including handling rate limits, schema drift, and partial failures
- Strong background in modern cloud-based architectures, particularly AWS
- Active use of modern AI coding tools (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, or similar) as part of your development workflow
Preferred / Nice-to-Have Experience
- Experience working in B2B SaaS environments
- Experience integrating with Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs), Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs), Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), or Dealer Management Systems (DMS)
- Production experience with Terraform, EKS, Datadog, and GitLab
- Experience operating messaging infrastructure including SMTP, SMS aggregators, or chat platforms
- Experience building platforms that AI agents or other automated systems consume
- Experience with Redshift, DynamoDB, EventBridge, and Redis
What We Value
We care about what you’ve built and the depth you’ve developed. If you’ve owned and operated significant systems in production, shipped strong software end to end, written code other engineers were glad to inherit, or developed real depth in a backend domain, put that front and center. Show us what you’ve built, what problems you’ve wrestled with, and how you reason about tradeoffs in real-world systems.
Conversica is a remote-first company building AI-powered solutions that help businesses engage customers more effectively. You’ll join a small, experienced platform engineering team and partner closely with our AI Engineering team to build the backend that powers our agent-native platform., influence the direction of the platform, and help build the durable, customer-ready systems that turn emerging AI capabilities into reliable products.
This is a full-time, exempt position. Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several U.S. geographic markets and is based on role scope, experience, and job-related skills. Conversica offers comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits, PTO, holiday pay, 401(k), and equity.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
