Senior Backend EngineerAbout the roleWe have multiple backend engineering roles open on various teams. The specific level, scope, and technical focus will be aligned to the opportunity and the candidate's experience. Experience with cloud platforms, distributed systems, developer tools, SDK engineering, data infrastructure, observability, or AI/agent systems may be relevant for some teams.
Candidates may be considered for opportunities across product engineering, core engineering, feature management, observability, experimentation, data platform, cloud infrastructure, SDKs, and AI/agent product areas, depending on experience, interests, and business need.
As a Senior Backend Engineer at LaunchDarkly, you will design, build, and operate the services that power reliable software delivery for our customers. You may work on APIs, distributed systems, configuration and event pipelines, data services, SDK-related infrastructure, platform capabilities, or backend systems supporting our product experiences.
You will take ownership of complex, high-impact work from problem definition through production and iteration. You will partner with Product, Design, Staff Engineers, Engineering Managers, and adjacent teams to turn customer and business needs into simple, scalable solutions. Your work will influence technical direction within your team and, where appropriate, across team boundaries.
What you'll do- Lead the design and delivery of large or ambiguous backend projects, breaking them into clear milestones and creating alignment with partners.
- Design, implement, test, and operate production services and APIs that are scalable, secure, observable, and maintainable.
- Make and communicate thoughtful tradeoffs across scalability, performance, reliability, security, maintainability, cost, and delivery speed.
- Identify architectural risks, performance bottlenecks, operational gaps, and sources of technical friction; then drive durable improvements.
- Improve the observability and operability of the systems you own, including metrics, logs, traces, alerting, service-level objectives, and incident follow-through.
- Collaborate with Product, Design, Support, Customer Success, and other engineering teams to understand needs and deliver measurable customer outcomes.
- Influence technical direction through design documents, architecture discussions, code reviews, and clear written and verbal communication.
- Mentor engineers, raise the quality of technical decision-making, and contribute to a culture of inclusive collaboration and continuous improvement.
- Participate in production support and incident response with calm ownership, turning operational lessons into lasting improvements.
- Help evolve engineering practices, reusable patterns, and developer experiences that make other teams more effective.
Qualifications- 7+ years of experience building and operating production software, with a track record of delivering meaningful customer or business impact.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, testing, debugging, API design, and distributed-systems concepts.
- Deep experience with a backend language such as Go, Python, Rust, or an equivalent language. (Most of our teams use Go)
- Experience designing systems that must remain reliable, observable, secure, and maintainable as usage, complexity, and team ownership grow.
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects with ambiguous requirements, multiple stakeholders, or cross-team dependencies.
- Sound judgment when evaluating architecture, technology choices, operational risk, and short- versus long-term tradeoffs.
- Ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly and build alignment with technical and non-technical partners.
- Experience mentoring engineers and strengthening team practices through feedback, documentation, pairing, or technical leadership.
- A strong sense of ownership for production outcomes and downstream customer impact.
- Comfort learning unfamiliar systems and navigating changing priorities with curiosity and a collaborative mindset.
Pay:Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level 4:
- Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle - $191,800 - $263,670**
- Zone 2: Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $172,600 - $237,270*
- Zone 3: All other US locations - $163,000 - $224,070 **
LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.
*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.
