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Senior Software Engineer

McLean, Virginia

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. 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. 

Follow Appian: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. 

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.

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