Staff Backend Engineer

Job description

Apollo.io is the leading go-to-market solution for revenue teams, trusted by over 500,000 companies and millions of users globally, from rapidly growing startups to some of the world’s largest enterprises. Founded in 2015, the company is one of the fastest growing companies in SaaS, raising approximately $250 million to date and valued at $1.6 billion. Apollo.io provides sales and marketing teams with easy access to verified contact data for over 210 million B2B contacts and 35 million companies worldwide, along with tools to engage and convert these contacts in one unified platform. By helping revenue professionals find the most accurate contact information and automating the outreach process, Apollo.io turns prospects into customers. Apollo raised a series D in 2023 and is backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and more, and counts the former President and COO of Hubspot, JD Sherman, among its board members.

Your Role & Mission

As a Staff Software Engineer at Apollo, you’ll be responsible for leading the technical direction and execution of complex, high-impact initiatives that span teams and systems. Your influence will extend beyond your immediate team—shaping architectural decisions, elevating engineering practices, and mentoring future leaders.

🔹 Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable, high-availability systems that run ²⁴⁄₇ and support mission-critical workflows
• Own and deliver multi-tier, high-volume applications with performance, accessibility, and resilience in mind
• Write high-quality, maintainable code with a strong focus on developer experience and system performance
• Drive and uphold engineering best practices, including code reviews, test coverage, monitoring, and observability
• Provide technical leadership across cross-functional teams, guiding architecture, trade-offs, and execution
• Mentor and sponsor engineers to grow their impact and deepen engineering culture
• Lead large-scale, cross-team projects from concept to production
• Deliver clear, objective feedback to peers and junior engineers through structured reviews and 1:1s

🎯 Outcomes You’ll Drive

• Customer Impact – Deep understanding of product metrics and direct contribution to measurable improvements through agile iteration
• Technical Leadership – Lead complex projects, own key systems, and define roadmaps in collaboration with managers and PMs
• Velocity – Consistent output and high impact, even within challenging, legacy, or high-complexity codebases
• Engineering Quality – Set the standard for code quality and technical excellence on your team
• Cross-Team Communication – Drive alignment across squads and stakeholders through effective communication
• Platform Resilience – Build scalable, monitored, and self-healing systems with best-in-class availability

🛠️ Requirements

• 10+ years of deep experience building and scaling backend systems in production environments
• Proven ability to develop features with performance, reliability, and scalability in mind
• Strong product intuition—balancing technical scope with MVP delivery
• Expertise with message queues, background jobs, and distributed system patterns
• Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., GCP Logging, Prometheus, NewRelic)
• Demonstrated ability to leverage AI tools (e.g., code generation, debugging, automation) and stay current with emerging AI trends
• Experience with LLM architecture, pipelines, or applied AI tooling is a strong bonus

🌟 Nice to Have

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field (or equivalent experience)
• Proficiency in one or more general-purpose programming languages (e.g., Java, Python, Ruby, Go)
• Experience integrating with third-party APIs, including handling rate limits, failure cases, and retries gracefully

💡 Example Challenges You’ll Tackle

• Scaling Workflows Platform – Help us turn Workflows into a plug-and-play automation platform where new triggers, actions, and integrations can be added in hours, not weeks.
• Fault-Tolerant Infrastructure – Design the backbone of a high-scale, event-driven system that guarantees reliability, speed, and safety at massive scale.
• Agentic Automation & Adoption – Lead the roadmap for next-gen agentic automation and build tooling that empowers every team at Apollo to move faster with confidence.

If you’re looking for a place where your backend engineering work directly impacts millions of users, where you can push the boundaries of what’s possible with LLMs and agents, and where your career can thrive in the AI-native future—Apollo is the place for you.

Application Instructions

To help us identify candidates with strong real-world AI engineering experience, please answer the following five short screening questions directly in your application (2–5 sentences per response). Applications without answers to these questions will not be reviewed.

We are AI Native

Apollo.io is an AI-native company built on a culture of continuous improvement. We’re on the front lines of driving productivity for our customers—and we expect the same mindset from our team. If you’re energized by finding smarter, faster ways to get things done using AI and automation, you’ll thrive here.

Why You’ll Love Working at Apollo

At Apollo, we’re driven by a shared mission: to help our customers unlock their full revenue potential. That’s why we take extreme ownership of our work, move with focus and urgency, and learn voraciously to stay ahead.

We invest deeply in your growth, ensuring you have the resources, support, and autonomy to own your role and make a real impact. Collaboration is at our core—we’re all for one, meaning you’ll have a team across departments ready to help you succeed. We encourage bold ideas and courageous action, giving you the freedom to experiment, take smart risks, and drive big wins.

If you’re looking for a place where your work matters, where you can push boundaries, and where your career can thrive—Apollo is the place for you.

Learn more here!