Senior Software Engineer II - Backend Developer Experience (Remote USA)

Optro

$120K — $160K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6+ years of professional software development experience, focusing on backend systems or build/test infrastructure.
  • Technical mastery in Node.js and TypeScript, with expertise in asynchronous patterns and performance tuning.
  • Experience designing and managing complex monorepo environments with modern build tools like pnpm and Turborepo.
  • Ability to create reusable scaffolding and tooling to streamline workflows and maintain engineering standards.
  • Proven track record in developing repeatable automation and CLI scripts that are safe for continuous execution.
  • Exceptional communication skills and experience in writing Engineering Design Docs and achieving cross-team consensus.
  • Proactive approach to managing rapidly changing contexts and balancing short-term and long-term engineering needs.

Responsibilities

  • Steward technical direction of the backend TypeScript monorepo, focusing on build orchestration and code quality tooling.
  • Design and build platform tooling, including monorepo scaffolding and shared libraries.
  • Optimize the test and feedback loop in collaboration with quality assurance to enhance efficiency.
  • Support and optimize CI pipelines, ensuring fast and reliable execution.
  • Drive the creation of repeatable automation tools and configuration scripts.
  • Collaborate across engineering to identify friction points and improve platform tooling adoption.

Benefits

  • Collaborative and dynamic work environment that values innovative thinking and problem-solving.
  • Opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology and tools in backend development.
  • Focus on developer experience, ensuring a supportive and efficient workflow for all team members.
  • Chance to take ownership of significant components of the software development process.
Full Job Description
Why This Role is Exciting

The pace at which Optro's engineers can ship-safely, confidently, and without friction-is one of the highest-leverage opportunities in the company. As our backend JavaScript/TypeScript monorepo expands, the developer experience (DX) becomes the defining factor in our engineering velocity.

At Optro, we believe a "developer" is anyone who works with code-be that an engineer, a designer, a product manager, or an AI agent. Your mission on the DX (Developer Experience) team is to ensure that no matter who-or what-is working in our codebase, the local development loop, build pipelines, test execution pathways, and code quality standards are fast, predictable, and robust.

As a Senior Software Engineer II focusing on Backend DX, you will help set the technical direction for this next-generation development loop. Working as an owner of the Backend CI system as part of the larger organization, you will act as a key maintainer and steward. You will design and deliver the tooling, automation, and platform abstractions that ensure every developer can iterate without friction, partnering extensively with fellow developers, system architects, and quality assurance stakeholders to scale our repository infrastructure in a way that respects human creativity and supports modern tooling.

Your Mission

Your mission is to build a rock-solid, fast, and scalable inner and outer development loop. You will turn our monorepo into a highly efficient environment, ensuring that a 10x acceleration in developer actions (by developers running manual commands or automated scripts) is supported by a stable, shared, and hyper-optimized build, test execution, and code maintenance infrastructure.

Responsibilities
  • Steward Monorepo DX & Quality Tooling: In close alignment with core DX teammates and the Architecture team, steward the technical direction of our backend TypeScript monorepo, taking primary ownership of build orchestration, code quality tooling (linting, formatting, static analysis), and inner-loop tooling that supports both human and automated development.
  • Design and Build Platform Tooling: Create monorepo scaffolding, shared libraries, and code generation patterns that make it trivial for any contributor to keep backend services healthy and aligned with current standards.
  • Optimize the Test & Feedback Loop: Partner with quality assurance stakeholders to optimize how test suites run within our build graphs. Your focus will be on the execution efficiency of these loops (e.g., test sharding, build graph caching, and feedback speed) to keep developer wait-times low.
  • Support and Optimize Monorepo CI Pipelines: Collaborate with our dedicated CI engineering resources to ensure backend and monorepo execution pipelines are fast, deterministic, and deliver direct feedback back to developer environments.
  • Drive Repeatable and Safe Automation: Build tooling, CLI scripts, and configurations that can be safely executed repeatedly by either engineers or automated environments without introducing unintended side effects or configuration drift.
  • Partner Across Engineering: Collaborate closely with fellow developers, the Architecture team, and quality engineering stakeholders to support backend patterns, identify build/test friction, run developer surveys, and drive platform-wide tool adoption.


Requirements
  • 6+ years of professional software development experience, with a heavy emphasis on backend systems, platform tools, or build/test infrastructure at a non-trivial scale.
  • Technical Mastery: Expert-level proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript, with a deep understanding of language features, asynchronous patterns, and backend performance tuning.
  • Monorepo & Build Architecture: Substantial hands-on experience designing, scaling, and managing complex workspace environments utilizing modern build orchestration tools (such as pnpm, Turborepo, or similar).
  • Platform Mindset: Experience building reusable scaffolding, scripts, and tooling designed to simplify workflows and enforce clean standards for other engineers.
  • Repeatable Automation & Tooling: A track record of designing automation, CLI scripts, or codemods that are deterministic, side-effect-free, and safe to execute repeatedly in a continuous-run environment.
  • Collaborative Leadership & Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication; a proven track record of writing clear EDDs (Engineering Design Docs), building consensus across diverse engineering, testing, and architecture disciplines, and guiding shared platform initiatives without direct organizational authority.
  • Comfort with Ambiguity: Highly proactive when operating in a rapidly changing space, with a talent for balancing immediate developer pain-points with long-term infrastructure scaling needs.

Preferred Experience
  • Expert-level experience with our core stack: pnpm, Turborepo, rolldown/tsdown, and vitest.
  • Experience with high-performance tooling (e.g., oxlint, oxfmt).
  • Deep experience with GitHub Actions at scale (including caching, test sharding, and static analysis workflows in tandem with CI partners).
  • Experience building developer-facing metrics (DORA, build/test telemetry, run-time analysis) to quantify DX improvements.
  • Familiarity with Docker and container orchestration (Kubernetes preferred), especially as it relates to local developer environments.
  • Familiarity with building automation, migrations, or quality-control tooling meant to be consumed by developer scripts and automated codemods.
  • Bonus: Familiarity with Go (Golang), Python, or ML/AI developer tooling and workflows.

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