Staff Backend Engineer

Who We Are

WillowTree, a TELUS International Company, is an award-winning digital product consultancy driven by innovation and grounded in strategy and user-centric design. We create long-term partnerships with the world’s leading brands to build and design digital flagship products crucial to our clients’ business needs. We’re a global consultancy with a client list that includes the NBA, Capital One, Mastercard, Charles Schwab, PepsiCo, AB InBev, Marriott, Domino's, and many more. Ultimately we measure ourselves by the outcomes we achieve for our clients. 

In January 2023, WillowTree was acquired by TELUS International (Symbol: TIXT).  The combined company brings an unparalleled ability to deliver customer service solutions to our clients, including apps, websites, voice experiences, content moderation, AI annotation, and customer experience representatives.

Location and Flexibility

Our Staff Backend Software Engineers are integral parts of our team at WillowTree. To help retain our deep culture of collaboration, this role will maintain an in-office presence in a hybrid capacity (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays) out of one of our office locations (Boston, MA, Columbus, OH, Charlottesville,VA, Durham, NC).  

The Opportunity

We are hiring for an enthusiastic Staff Backend Engineer. You will be responsible for designing and building scalable and resilient backend systems that power our applications. Leveraging your expertise in cloud technologies, databases, and API development, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver robust solutions that meet the needs of our clients and users.

We understand our responsibility to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive place within the tech industry, while pushing to make our industry more representative. Because of this responsibility, we need candidates who value diversity and inclusion through their work, team collaboration, or mentorship. So in your cover letter, we encourage you to reflect on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Responsibilities 

• Confidently deliver high-quality software by applying critical thinking to products, requirements, and processes
• Partner closely with clients to influence technical product decisions and business goals
• You’ll continually stay up to date with the landscape of software engineering best practices, tools, and frameworks
• Have extensive professional programming experience— we’re thinking at least 12+ years
• Understanding of various software architectures and can adapt/compose solutions to unique problems with sustainable and reusable solutions
• Help mentor and coach a project team towards shared goals and outcomes
• Navigate difficult conversations by providing constructive feedback to teams and clients
• You’ll identify obstacles to ensure quality, improve our user experience and how we build software
• Self-aware of limitations, yet curious to learn new solutions while being receptive to constructive feedback from teammates
• You’ll guide your team to understand and work through changing priorities by bringing positive energy 
• Communicate and simplify complex problems in order to foster understanding across multidisciplinary teams 
• Design and develop 12-factor apps that can efficiently scale in modern cloud environments.
• Work with relational and non-relational databases to design efficient data models and optimize data access.
• Design and develop APIs that are well-documented, reliable, and consumable by various clients.
• Troubleshoot problems in existing code and systems, identify root causes, and autonomously implement remedial actions.

Qualifications

• Have professional programming experience — we’re thinking 12+ years
• Inspire others to write code that is durable, secure, scalable, always up and running
• Have in-depth experience with one server-side programming language — such as Java, Kotlin or other JVM languages; C# or other .NET languages; Python, Go, and perhaps a breadth in others
• Have in-depth experience working with relational and/or NoSQL databases. This could be PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, MongoDB, or another type of document-database. This includes experience with schema design, indexing, querying, and performance tuning
• Are eager to share your knowledge with teammates through mentorship, code reviews and pair programming sessions
• Have experience writing apps for Azure, AWS, GCP, CloudFoundry, Heroku, SalesForce, Mulesoft and/or other cloud providers
• Are well versed in using Cloud Provider utilities such as CLI tools and Consoles (Azure Portal, AWS Console)
• Have experience developing RESTful APIs and/or Graphql APIs
• Possess strong debugging and troubleshooting skills
• Are able to assist teammates with issues by breaking down complex tasks
• Effectively communicate system architecture and development decisions to clients and teammates
• Strong appreciation for CI/CD (e.g. CircleCI, TeamCity, AzureDevops) and experience setting up deployment pipelines
• Demonstrated leadership skills and a passion for fostering an inclusive and innovative work culture.
• This position requires experience with NodeJS.

What We'll Offer

In addition to a great culture and interesting work with opportunities for growth and development, this position is eligible for the following benefits: 

• Healthcare benefits - Medical, Vision, Dental (Including an option for 100% coverage of individual employee medical premiums)
• Life & Disability Insurance
• 401K matching
• Flexible paid time off & paid company holidays
• Parental Leave
• Employee Share Purchase Plan
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• And more!

*Individual compensation is based on various factors unique to each candidate, including skill set, experience, qualifications, and other job-related reasons determined during the interview process. Role ranges are periodically reviewed and updated based on market changes, internal needs, and industry trends.  To drive ongoing pay equity for team members, WillowTree conducts regular compensation audits.

United States Hiring Range

$150,000 - $174,000 USD