---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer - Backend Platform at Customer.io'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-backend-platform-customer-io-americas-60110b8z08sk'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Senior Software Engineer - Backend Platform at Customer.io

- **Company:** Customer.io
- **Location:** Americas
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-07-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/customerio/jobs/8055585

## Job description

Hi, I'm Manu, Engineering Manager at [Customer.io](http://customer.io/). We're looking for experienced backend engineers who want to build and own the infrastructure that powers one of the most data-intensive platforms in marketing automation — systems that process millions of events per second, orchestrate complex workflows at scale, and keep everything running reliably for thousands of customers worldwide.

You'll work on the Platform team, tackling hard distributed systems problems: designing for fault tolerance, scaling services under real production pressure, and building the foundational layers that every other team at [Customer.io](http://Customer.io) depends on. This isn't just maintenance work — you'll shape the architecture of systems that need to be both highly available and constantly evolving.

If you're someone who gets energized by the intersection of scale, reliability, and developer experience — and wants ownership over infrastructure that truly matters — we'd love to talk.

What you'll bring:

- Deep experience with distributed systems and large-scale backend architecture
- Strong instincts around reliability, observability, and fault tolerance
- Comfort reasoning about performance, capacity, and trade-offs at scale
- Experience with event-driven systems, message queues, or data pipelines is a plus
- A collaborative mindset — you raise the team around you

About [Customer.io](http://customer.io/)

Over 9,000 companies - from scrappy startups to global brands - use our platform to send billions of emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS every day. [Customer.io](http://Customer.io) powers automated communication that people actually want to receive.

We help teams send smarter, more relevant messages using real-time behavioral data. Under the hood: Go, React, Ember and AI help us ship fast and scale with confidence.

## What We Value

Ownership

You drive technical direction across systems and teams. You move with urgency, build with empathy, and think long-term. You’ve led large-scale infrastructure initiatives and know what it takes to get them over the line.

Engineers with customer focus

You think about how infrastructure unlocks customer value. You care about developer experience, system design, and how your work shapes the customer experience.

A healthy disregard for “the way things are done”

You bring rigor and creativity. Best practices matter, but never more than forward motion.

## What You’ll Do

- Design and evolve distributed systems in Go to handle billions of daily events and messages and store and index petabytes of data
- Lead architectural decisions around performance, reliability, and real-time event processing
- Improve service-to-service communication through better APIs, messaging systems, and event-driven patterns
- Work across teams to uncover bottlenecks and system issues, and lead initiatives to resolve them for a smoother customer experience
- Tackle high-throughput challenges across data pipelines, queues, and scheduling infrastructure
- Able to debug production systems at scale using effective instrumentation, and resolve issues quickly and confidently
- Share knowledge and raise the bar through sharing your progress publicly with short videos, thoughtful writing, and mentorship
- Leverage AI tools to prototype, move faster, and make better decisions

## What we're looking for

- Significant experience (typically 10+ years) building scalable, distributed systems in Go (or similar statically typed languages)
- Deep experience with databases - relational (MySQL, Postgres) and non-relational (DynamoDB, BigTable) - and how to make them fast
- Comfort working in cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP)
- Familiarity with APIs, observability, and operating production systems
- A bias for action over perfection, and pride in owning technical decisions

## Compensation & Benefits

We believe in transparency. Starting salary for this role is $150,000 - $200,000 USD (or equivalent in local currency) depending on experience and subject to market rate adjustment.

We know our people are what make us great, and we’re committed to taking great care of them. Our inclusive benefits package supports your well-being and growth, including 100% coverage of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and supplemental insurance premiums for you and your family. We also offer 16 weeks paid parental leave, unlimited PTO, stipends for remote work and wellness, a professional development budget, and more.

[See full benefits here →](https://customer.io/careers#:~:text=our%20collective%20success.-,BENEFITS,-Our%C2%A0)

Our Process

No gotchas, no trick questions - just a clear, human process designed to help both of us make an informed decision.

- Application - We review everyone with care. Tell us why you're interested.
- Recruiter Call (30 mins) - Let’s chat about what you’re looking for and how we work.
- Hiring Manager Interview (60 mins) - Talk with one of our hiring managers about your working style and a project you've owned end-to-end, plus a short AI-assisted coding exercise.
- System Design Interview (60 mins) - A collaborative system design conversation focused on scaling challenges.
- Coding Interview (60 mins) - Pair with one of our engineers for an agentic live coding interview.

All final candidates will be asked to complete a background check and employment verifications as part of our pre-employment process.

[Customer.io](http://Customer.io) recognizes the stifling impact of systemic injustice on diverse communities. We commit to using our influence to increase inclusion and equity within the tech industry. We strive to build an inclusive team culture, implement bias-free hiring practices, and develop community partnerships to expand our global impact.

Zoom is the only video conference platform that we use, virtual interviews will be conducted using the video capability (i.e., not via the chat), and offers will be extended in writing on official [Customer.io](http://customer.io/) letterhead. Please be vigilant in all of your job search activity, and if you have any questions please contact jobs@customer.io.

Join us!

We believe in empathy, transparency, responsibility, and, yes, a little awkwardness. If you’re excited by what you read and want to build software that makes communication better for everyone—apply now.

## About Customer.io

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Customer.io is an AI-powered customer engagement platform that helps businesses send personalized, data-driven messages across email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messages, and webhooks.
- **Entity Type**: Private (backed by venture capital)
- **Headquarters**: Portland, Oregon, USA (with a fully remote, globally distributed team)
- **Founded**: 2012
- **Founders**: Colin Nederkoorn (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Marketing technology / Customer engagement & messaging infrastructure
- **Target Customers**: B2B — mid-market to enterprise companies (e.g., Notion, LESMILLS+, Angi) seeking to automate and personalize customer communications at scale
- **Mission/Purpose**: To create a world where you have one unified view of your audience and a single place where unlimited, real-time data powers more effective engagement.

## Products & Services
- **Customer.io Journeys**: A visual workflow builder for creating automated, multi-channel customer journeys (email, SMS, push, in-app) triggered by real-time user behavior.
- **Customer.io Data Pipelines**: Real-time event streaming and audience segmentation tools to unify first-party data from multiple sources.
- **Customer.io Messaging API**: Programmatic infrastructure for sending triggered messages across channels.
- **AI-Powered Features**: Leverages artificial intelligence to optimize message timing, content personalization, and channel selection.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Total Funding**: Not publicly disclosed (company is private).
- **Key Metric**: Over 9,000+ brands use the platform; processes millions of daily API calls and serves a large base of active users.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly disclosed in available sources. High-profile customers include Notion, LESMILLS+, and Angi.
- **Growth Signals**: The company is actively hiring across Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Data Science, and Customer Experience (19 open roles as of the latest careers page), indicating continued expansion. They have a global, remote-first team of 263 employees.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Real-time data infrastructure**: Unlike many marketing tools that batch data, Customer.io processes real-time behavioral events, enabling truly instant, context-aware messaging.
- **Unified multi-channel orchestration**: A single platform to manage email, SMS, push, in-app, and webhooks — reducing tool sprawl.
- **Developer-friendly approach**: Strong API and data pipeline tools appeal to product and engineering teams who want to build custom engagement logic.
- **Privacy-first with first-party data**: Designed to leverage brands’ own customer data, aligning with post-cookie and privacy-regulation trends.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI integration**: Embedding AI into personalization and orchestration to improve message relevance and campaign outcomes.
- **Scaling globally**: Hiring across EMEA and Americas to support a growing international customer base.
- **Deepening product capabilities**: Expanding data pipelines and automation features to serve larger, more complex enterprise use cases.

## Why Work Here
- **Fully remote and async-first**: A 100% remote, globally distributed company with asynchronous operating model, collaboration hours across time zones, and minimal unnecessary meetings.
- **Generous compensation & benefits**:
  - Competitive salary and equity
  - 100% paid medical, dental, vision, and mental health insurance for employee and family
  - Up to 5% 401k matching (dollar-for-dollar)
  - Unlimited PTO with a recommendation of at least 20 vacation days
  - 16 weeks paid parental leave (birth, adoption, foster)
  - 6 weeks paid family medical leave
  - $2,000/year professional development budget
  - $1,500 home office setup stipend
  - $250/month remote work stipend (internet, phone)
  - Up to $300/month co-working space reimbursement
  - $1,500/year healthy living stipend
  - Financial wellness provider access
  - Paid sabbatical after 5 years
- **Culture**: Strong emphasis on DEIB with Ami Resource Groups (ARGs), recognition programs, casual learning gatherings, and volunteer opportunities. Values include genuine connections, open communication, accountability, and celebrating individuality.
- **Engineering culture**: Opportunity to work with talented peers on impactful, scalable infrastructure that processes billions of events. Emphasis on autonomy and responsibility.

## Sources
1. [Customer.io Careers Page](https://customer.io/careers)
2. [Customer.io About Page](https://customer.io/about)
3. [Customer.io Official Website](https://customer.io/)
4. [Customer.io Greenhouse Job Board](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/customerio)
5. [Built In Company Profile](https://builtin.com/company/customerio)

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