Staff Product Engineer, Backend

Zūm is revolutionizing mass mobility with its Connected Mobility Experience (Zūm CMX™) system that connects and coordinates people, vehicles, and operations in real time. In the $50 billion student mobility market – the largest segment of the mass mobility industry – Zūm CMX is transforming a daily source of anxiety and disruption into a reliable, transparent, and efficient mobility experience for students and families. Today, more than 6,500 schools rely on Zūm CMX. Recognized globally for its innovative approach and operational execution, Zūm has been named to Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies, CNBC Disruptor 50 and Changemakers, the World Economic Forum, and the Financial Times’ Fastest Growing Companies lists. Zūm is backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital, GIC, TPG, and Softbank.

Who You Are:

• You care about the full lifecycle of a product feature, from idea to the customer seeing it in production, and you measure yourself by the business impact you drive.
• You want to lead the technical design of significant product initiatives built on top of Zūm's platform.
• You devise simple solutions to complex product problems and thrive owning outcomes with real business stakes.
• You lead a small group of engineers through execution.

What You'll Do:

• Be a core technical contributor and lead within backend product engineering, architecting the features and services your team builds, not the platform underneath them.
• Work with other backend engineers to deliver high-quality product features, from ideation to deployment.
• Partner with Product and Design to plan and scope new functionality, and represent engineering feasibility and tradeoffs in that planning.
• Improve and extend existing product-facing systems, building on the shared platform primitives (auth, data access, core services) rather than building your own.
• Introduce tools and process improvements that help your team ship faster, in coordination with platform-wide standards.
• Stay hands-on: own your code from design through production, and quickly see the impact of your work.

What You Bring To Zūm:

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science or equivalent experience. 8+ years of industry experience as a Software Engineer, with a track record of technical leadership on product-facing initiatives.
• Proven experience building backend systems for enterprise-level product features across multiple platforms.
• Strong hands-on skills in feature-level architecture and backend development.
• Experience with relational and non-relational databases.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages: Node.js, Java, or Python, with strong Node.js/TypeScript preferred.
• Hands-on experience deploying and managing applications in cloud environments (AWS or Google Cloud).
• Experience building scalable product features, both vertically and horizontally.
• Proficient in developing APIs for internal and external use, with a strong focus on performance, scalability, and security.
• Experience working within microservice-based architectures (consuming, not necessarily owning, the underlying infrastructure).
• Strong technical judgment and eagerness to follow and reinforce good coding conventions.
• Good planning, organization, and decision-making skills.
• Strong communication with engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders.

Bonus Points:

• Passionate about working for a mission-driven company.
• Experience working in the transportation industry.
• Strong experience with Node.js and TypeScript.

The targeted base salary range for this role is listed in the compensation section below. Actual salary may be above or below this range based on factors such as location, skills, and relevant experience. In addition, this position may include additional compensation in the form of equity or commissions. If you are a full-time salaried or hourly worker, we offer the following benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), Holidays, Wellness, Vacation, and more. The targeted pay range for this role in CA, USA is: $240,000 - $280,000 plus stock options.