Staff Backend Engineer (Infrastructure)

Role Overview

As part of our Application Infrastructure org, this is a greenfield team that will impact complex Coupang workflow systems. We need to create a set of systems that will allow rapid workflow development for hundreds of domain teams, allowing critical infrastructure like rocket delivery service. It is a highly visible system with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue flowing through the systems. It is a chance to design from scratch, and create a reliable workflow service at scale.

We are looking for a Senior/Staff Engineer to lead the architectural design and implementation of our next‑generation durable execution platform. This team is tasked with building a highly scalable, fault‑tolerant system from scratch that enables developers to write long‑running, reliable workflows as code.

At Coupang, we Aim High and Find a Way to solve impossible problems. You will be responsible for building a system that doesn't just meet industry standards but sets them, ensuring 5‑6 nines availability while leveraging AI to automate complex system behaviors and self‑healing capabilities.

What You Will Do

• Define Extreme Availability: Design for "5-6 nines" (99.9999% availability). You will Dive Deep into the tail latencies and edge cases of distributed state management to ensure our platform is always on for our customers.
• AI‑Driven Automation: Integrate AI/ML models to automate system functionality, including predictive scaling, automated bottleneck detection, and intelligent error recovery, ensuring we Wow the Customer through seamless platform performance and availability.
• Solve Hard Problems: Address challenges related to distributed locking, timers, and deterministic execution. You must Be Data‑Driven to validate architectural decisions against massive traffic patterns.
• Stakeholder management – work cross functionally with our product teams to provide infrastructure which serves the company’s business needs.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, Math, or a closely related field.
• 8 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Extensive Experience: 12+ years of professional software development experience, specifically building backend infrastructure that supports global‑scale traffic.
• High Availability Mastery: Proven track record of managing and maintaining systems with 5‑6 nines of availability. You understand that "good enough" isn't enough; we Focus on the Customer and the Experience by ensuring zero downtime.
• Distributed Systems Expert: Deep expertise in designing and deploying mission‑critical systems (e.g., databases, messaging queues, or orchestration engines) from the ground up.
• Technical Mastery: Expert‑level proficiency in Java, Python with deep understanding of concurrency and memory management.
• AI Integration: Experience or a strong architectural vision for using AI/ML to automate system‑level functionality and operational tasks.
• Specialized Knowledge: Deep familiarity with the Temporal or Cadence programming models and their underlying architecture. Experience in Kubernetes and containerization.
• Stateful Database Experience: Experience with Cassandra and TiDB preferred.
• Observability Expert: Expertise in building highly observable systems using distributed tracing and advanced telemetry to proactively identify issues.

Details to Consider

• This role is open to Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents only.
• This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
• Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.
• Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.
• Job titles and responsibilities may be subject to change depending on the candidate’s overall experience, etc. This will be communicated to the candidate at the appropriate time before the offer.
• Hiring may be restricted in case the legal qualifications required for hiring and work performance is not met.