Staff Backend Software Engineer

DAT•Denver, CO

4d•$172,000 - $223,000•Hybrid

About The Position

About DAT DAT is an award-winning employer of choice and a next-generation SaaS technology company that has been at the leading edge of innovation in transportation supply chain logistics for 45 years. We continue to transform the industry year over year, by deploying a suite of software solutions to millions of customers every day - customers who depend on DAT for the most relevant data and most accurate insights to help them make smarter business decisions and run their companies more profitably. We operate the largest marketplace of its kind in North America, with 400 million freights posted in 2022, and a database of $150 billion of annual global shipment market transaction data. Our headquarters are in Denver, CO, and Beaverton, OR, with additional offices in Seattle, WA; Springfield, MO; and Bangalore, India. For additional information, see www.DAT.com/company Job Application Deadline: 05/31/2026 Candidate profile As a Staff Backend Software Engineer, you will be a key technical leader, responsible for the design, development, and delivery of our core backend services. You will tackle complex technical challenges, set architectural direction, and champion best practices across the engineering organization. This is a highly visible role for an expert who wants to have a major impact on our platform.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in backend software development, including significant time as a senior or staff engineer owning complex, high‑throughput production services.
Deep Node.js/TypeScript expertise, building and operating Express (or similar) HTTP APIs at scale.
Proven experience owning Tier‑1, customer‑facing transaction systems (e.g., posting, booking, marketplace flows) with strict availability, correctness, and latency expectations.
Extensive AWS experience with production backends, ideally including EKS/Kubernetes, Lambda, MSK/Kafka, DocumentDB or MongoDB, and Secrets Manager/S3/CloudWatch, plus infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform or similar).
Strong background in event‑driven and distributed systems using Kafka/MSK
Expertise with document databases especially DocumentDB/MongoDB
Hands‑on experience with zero/low‑downtime migrations
Strong understanding of microservice and API contracts
Fluency with observability and on‑call health, designing dashboards, APM traces, logs, and alerts; defining SLOs; and using these tools to drive down incident frequency and MTTR.
Experience establishing and raising engineering standards for a team: PR and testing guidelines (unit/contract/integration/smoke/end-to-end), deployment validation checklists, and post‑incident review practices.
Demonstrated technical leadership: leading cross‑team designs in ambiguous problem spaces, writing clear system design documents, operations runbooks, and driving alignment across Engineering, Product, and Operations.
Proven mentoring track record, especially helping mid‑level engineers grow in system design, observability, and operational excellence.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain trade‑offs and system behavior clearly to engineers, product managers, and non‑technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership: Lead the design and implementation of large-scale, high-performance backend systems and microservices using Node.js.
Best Practices: Drive the adoption of modern software development practices, including automated testing, conduct code reviews, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code.
Cloud Architecture: Architect, maintain and monitor robust, scalable and reliable services on AWS, leveraging services like EKS, MSK (Kafka), and S3.
Mentorship: Mentor other backend engineers and provide technical guidance to elevate the skill level of the entire team.
Incident Management: Lead the response and resolution for complex production incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement preventative measures.
Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, DevOps, and front-end engineers, to deliver timely, high-quality and performing end-to-end solutions.