Staff Backend Engineer (Streaming and AI Infrastructure)

Coupand•Seattle, WA

About The Position

As part of our Application Infrastructure org, this is a team building Coupang’s next-generation Real-Time Streaming & AI Platform that powers the end customer website and mobile apps. We are looking for a visionary Staff Software Engineer to lead the architectural design of a platform capable of processing over 100k+ events per second with sub-second, end-to-end latency. This system will serve as the central nervous system for Coupang, enabling real-time product and customer data and instant personalization. You will build a system that doesn't just meet industry standards but sets them, ensuring 5-6 nines availability while leveraging AI to optimize data flows and automate complex system behaviors.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, Math, or a closely related field
4 years of experience in backend software development
Proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework
Experience working in cloud environments, particularly AWS
Demonstrated experience in building and maintaining highly available, distributed systems

Nice To Haves

Expert-level experience in Cassandra, TiDB, or DynamoDB
Expert-level proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework.
Demonstrated experience in building and maintaining highly available, distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS).
Experience with high-volume messaging systems (e.g., Kafka, SQS)
10+ years of professional software development experience building backend infrastructure that supports global-scale, real-time traffic.
Proven track record of optimizing JVM applications for ultra-low latency (<100ms p99s) and high concurrency.
Experience or a strong architectural vision for using AI/ML to automate system-level functionality, such as real-time anomaly detection in data streams.
Deep understanding of the CAP theorem, consensus algorithms, and building fault-tolerant systems from the ground up.

Responsibilities

Lead the end-to-end design of a distributed streaming engine.
Build the Best Team and Help Them Grow by setting the gold standard for high-throughput, low-latency architectural integrity.
Design for "5-6 nines" (99.9999% availability) at a throughput of 100k+ events/sec.
Dive Deep into JVM tuning, memory management, and network I/O to ensure sub-second latency across global clusters.
Integrate AI/ML models directly into the stream processing path.
Implement predictive scaling and intelligent load balancing to ensure we Wow the Customer through seamless, real-time platform responsiveness.
Address challenges related to distributed consistency, at times, exactly-once processing guarantees, and backpressure management.
Be Data-Driven to validate architectural decisions against massive, bursty traffic patterns.