---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer at Appian Corporation'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-appian-corporation-mclean-j7f7d41egtgg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-18'
---

# Senior Software Engineer at Appian Corporation 

- **Company:** Appian Corporation 
- **Location:** Mclean, VA
- **Compensation:** $125k–$250k
- **Posted:** 2026-05-18
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/appian/jobs/7938241

## Job description

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.

Senior Software Engineer

Overview:

At Appian, we’re not only about building awesome software, but also about growing our culture of passion, energy, and innovation—great people, great software! As a performance-focused Software Engineer, your mission will be to tackle our most challenging technical problems and build the tools required to solve complex performance bottlenecks. You will work alongside brilliant engineers to ensure our real-time, distributed platform operates with maximum speed, stability, and scale.

Team Description:

The Performance Engineering team sits at the vital intersection of core software development and infrastructure reliability. We are a squad of builders dedicated to keeping Appian fast and resilient under high-volume enterprise loads. We don't just fix slow code; we construct custom performance tooling, design automated testing frameworks, and maintain the deep observability systems that keep our platform running seamlessly.

In this role, you will:

- Engine Custom Tooling: Build custom internal tools, automation scripts, and diagnostic software to identify, isolate, and eliminate complex platform bottlenecks.
- Automate Performance Testing: Create and expand libraries, frameworks, and infrastructure to enable continuous automated performance and load testing across the platform.
- Drive Deep Observability: Leverage modern observability stacks (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Loki, Grafana, ElasticSearch, and Kubernetes) to monitor, trace, and optimize real-time system behavior.
- Debug & Rapidly Respond: Act as a critical responder for complex customer performance investigations and production issues, conducting root-cause analysis to prevent recurrence.
- Optimize Core Architecture: Utilize deep JVM knowledge and Linux fundamentals to profile runtime performance, tune application servers, and optimize database queries.
- Collaborate in Agile Squads: Partner closely with cross-functional scrum teams to deliver simple, elegant, and highly performant solutions to multi-layered technical challenges.

The Ideal Candidate:

- Systems & Performance Obsessed: You thrive on solving labyrinthine problems within large, high-performance distributed systems, with a natural curiosity for low-level platform behaviors.
- Culture & Builder Mindset: You bring energy, passion, and technical rigor to your team, taking immense pride in building tools that make everyone else's code run faster.
- Proactive Problem Solver: You prefer building long-term automated preventions over repeatedly applying short-term band-aids to recurring system issues.

Basic Qualifications:

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field
- 4+ years of professional experience building, delivering, and optimizing software applications.
- Proven experience programming in Java, Python, or other interpreted/compiled languages (e.g., C/C++).
- Solid foundation in Linux system fundamentals (threading, memory management, context switching) and shell scripting.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Deep technical knowledge of the JVM, including Garbage Collection tuning, heap dump analysis, and Java application servers (Tomcat, Spring).
- Hands-on experience with cloud-native monitoring and tracing tools (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ElasticSearch) and load-testing tools (e.g., Locust).
- Experience with modern CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and orchestration technologies (GitLab, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes).
- Proven track record in rapid-response incident management and production-level debugging.

The base salary range represents a good faith and reasonable estimate of the range at the time of posting. Actual compensation will be dependent on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant work experience, qualifications, internal peer equity, and market and business conditions that exist when extending an offer. A discretionary bonus may be awarded in recognition of individual and company performance.

In addition, Appian provides generous benefits offerings that include a 401(k) plan with company match, flexible time off, paid parental leave, medical, dental, and vision plans, life insurance, disability insurance, wellness programs, flexible spending accounts, health savings account contributions, an employee referral bonus program, and learning and development resources. Certain positions may be eligible for equity awards.

Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation, commission, bonus, or benefit plans.

Base Salary Range $125,000—$250,000 USD

Tools and Resources

- Training and Development: During onboarding, we focus on equipping new hires with the skills and knowledge for success through department-specific training. Continuous learning is a central focus at Appian, with dedicated mentorship and the First-Friend program being widely utilized resources for new hires.
- Growth Opportunities: Appian provides a diverse array of growth and development opportunities, including our leadership program tailored for new and aspiring managers, a comprehensive library of specialized department training through Appian University, skills based training, and tuition reimbursement for those aiming to advance their education. This commitment ensures that employees have access to a holistic range of development opportunities.
- Community: We’ll immerse you into our community rooted in respect starting on day one. Appian fosters inclusivity through our 8 employee-led [affinity groups](https://careers.appian.com/affinity-groups/). These groups help employees build stronger internal and external networks by planning social, educational, and outreach activities to connect with Appianites and larger initiatives throughout the company.

## Benefits

Appian offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health, wellbeing, and financial future. Benefits may include health coverage, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with free mental health support, life and disability insurance, an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP), a retirement/pension plan, wellness dollars, tuition reimbursement, family-forming benefits and more. Benefits vary by country—please ask your Talent Acquisition contact for details specific to the location you are applying to.

## About Appian

Appian provides AI automation for the most important business processes at the world’s largest organizations. Our platform is known for its unique power, reliability, and scale. We’ve been automating processes for more than 25 years and have proven expertise in enterprise operations. For more information, visit [appian.com](http://www.appian.com/).

Follow Appian: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@appian), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/appiancorp/), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/AppianCorporation/), and [X](https://x.com/Appian).

Appian is an equal opportunity employer that strives to attract and retain the best talent. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Appian provides reasonable accommodations to applicants in accordance with all applicable laws. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at ReasonableAccommodations@appian.com. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.

[Appian's Applicant & Candidate Privacy Notice](https://careers.appian.com/applicant-and-candidate-privacy-notice/)

## About Appian Corporation 

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Appian provides an AI-powered process orchestration platform that automates complex workflows and builds low-code applications for large enterprises and governments.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: APPN)
- **Headquarters**: McLean, Virginia, United States [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)
- **Founded**: 1999 [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)
- **Founders**: Matt Calkins, Michael Beckley, Robert Kramer, Marc Wilson [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Enterprise software – low-code application platforms, business process automation, and AI orchestration.
- **Target customers**: B2B – large enterprises and government agencies across financial services, insurance, life sciences, public sector, and more [appian.com](https://appian.com/about/explore/overview).
- **Mission / purpose**: “Help organizations run better processes that reduce costs, improve customer experiences, and gain a strategic edge.” [careers.appian.com](https://careers.appian.com/life-at-appian)

## Products & Services
- **[Appian Platform](https://appian.com/)**: Low-code development environment for building enterprise applications, automating workflows, and integrating systems. Includes drag-and‑drop design, pre‑built connectors, and a unified interface for process orchestration.
- **[Appian AI Copilot](https://appian.com/)**: AI assistant that generates code from natural‑language prompts, extracts data from documents, and orchestrates AI agents alongside human tasks.
- **[Appian Data Fabric](https://appian.com/)**: Unified data layer that connects disparate sources, enables real‑time access, and enforces security policies without moving data.
- **[Process Intelligence](https://appian.com/)**: Process mining and analytics to discover bottlenecks and optimize workflows.
- **[Case Management Studio](https://appian.com/)**: Specialized module for managing complex, case‑based work (e.g., claims, investigations, compliance).
- **Solutions for Government**: FedRAMP‑authorized, HIPAA‑compliant offerings for federal acquisition, procurement, and award management [appian.com](https://appian.com/).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: $6.5 billion (as of mid‑2025) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)
- **Key Metric** (public): **Annual Revenue** – $726.9 million (latest fiscal year) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Novak Biddle Venture Partners (led Series A); additional venture rounds before IPO [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew 12% year‑over‑year to 1,891 employees [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)
  - Named a **Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms** [appian.com](https://appian.com/about/explore/overview)
  - Awarded **$2.036 billion in a lawsuit against Pegasystems**, reflecting the strength of its intellectual property [appian.com](https://appian.com/about/explore/overview)
  - Operations in 26 countries with growing presence in India, Europe, and Australia [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Platform maturity**: 25+ years of process automation experience, deeply embedded in enterprise IT.
- **AI orchestration first**: Combines low‑code with AI agents, allowing customers to automate complex, cross‑system workflows without replacing existing infrastructure.
- **Compliance & security**: Holds FedRAMP, HIPAA, and other global certifications – a critical moat for government and regulated industries [appian.com](https://appian.com/).
- **Reliability**: 99.95% uptime SLA and a resilient, high‑availability architecture [appian.com](https://appian.com/).
- **Legal victory**: The $2 billion plus award against Pega reinforces Appian’s unique process‑automation IP and deters competitors.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI‑first platform**: Embedding AI Copilot deeper into developer and end‑user workflows to increase automation and reduce manual coding.
- **Process orchestration**: Positioning as the “process layer” for enterprise AI, where agents, systems, and people are coordinated from a single interface.
- **Expansion in regulated verticals**: Deepening solutions for public sector, financial services, and life sciences with compliance accelerators.
- **Global hiring**: Increasing R&D and go‑to‑market headcount (159 active job postings, up 80% YoY) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values of **Intensity** (ambition, ownership) and **Excellence** (high standards, prioritize quality). Employee‑led **Affinity Groups** support DEI [careers.appian.com](https://careers.appian.com/).
- **Awards**: Great Place to Work® Certified (2024‑2025), Comparably Best Perks & Benefits (2024), Best Work‑Life Balance (2024), Best Company for Career Growth (2025) [careers.appian.com](https://careers.appian.com/life-at-appian).
- **Benefits** [careers.appian.com](https://careers.appian.com/life-at-appian):
  - Fully covered health insurance, mental wellness support, on‑site gyms (major offices).
  - 12 weeks paid parental leave, adoption/fertility assistance.
  - 401(k) match, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, tax‑advantaged commuter benefits.
  - Tuition reimbursement, mentorship program, Appian University for ongoing learning.
- **Work model**: Hybrid/office‑first with many global locations; some remote roles available (e.g., “Remote (Germany)” listed) [careers.appian.com](https://careers.appian.com/).
- **Engineering & career growth**: Strong emphasis on onboarding (“First Friend,” role‑specific academies) and clear career paths from specialist to VP level.

## Sources
1. [appian.com](https://appian.com/) – Company homepage, product overview, certifications, case studies
2. [careers.appian.com](https://careers.appian.com/) – Careers landing page, values, awards
3. [careers.appian.com/life-at-appian](https://careers.appian.com/life-at-appian) – Benefits and culture details
4. [appian.com/about/explore/overview](https://appian.com/about/explore/overview) – About page, history, leadership, news
5. [linkedin.com/company/appian](https://www.linkedin.com/company/appian) – Company details, financials, headcount, open roles

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