Software Engineer (II or Senior) - Backend

About OvationOvation is a comprehensive customer experience management platform for restaurant brands. Guests can share feedback easily without long surveys, online reviews, or ineffective complaints. Our platform connects restaurants and guests, building better relationships and improving hospitality communication.The RoleWe are seeking a Backend Engineer (II or Senior) skilled in building event-driven, distributed systems for customer-facing applications at scale. You will design and develop systems impacting thousands of restaurants, make architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and influence our technical growth.What Makes This Role InterestingWork at the forefront of AI-powered product development, creating intelligent features for millions of customersInfluence the technical and product direction within a small, high-impact engineering teamTake on challenging problems involving event-driven microservices, real-time communication, and integrations while building a fast-growing AI platformWhat We OfferCompetitive salaryRemote-first culture with occasional in-person eventsClear career growth and learning budgetHealth benefits including 401k matchingFlexible hours, generous PTO, company holidays, and work-life balance policies like Focus Fridays and limited messaging outside work hoursWhat You'll DoSystem Design & ArchitectureDesign scalable event-driven microservices for high-volume customer interactionBuild robust APIs for web, mobile, and third-party useDesign efficient database schemas and queriesLead discussions on technical trade-offsImplement observability: logging, metrics, tracing, alertingCore DevelopmentDevelop backend features for surveys, messaging, campaigns, analytics, and integrationsBuild integrations with external platforms like POS, loyalty programs, and review sitesWrite clean, test-covered, maintainable codeAI-Powered DevelopmentIntegrate with AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) to build intelligent featuresApply AI-first development strategies beyond standard codingExperiment with tools to improve our software development life cycleCollaboration & LeadershipMentor junior and mid-level engineers through reviews and pair programmingPartner with product managers to translate requirements into designsCollaborate with frontend engineers on API contractsShare knowledge and define best practicesHelp shape long-term technical visionWhat We're Looking ForCore Competencies (Required)5+ years building backend systems, APIs, or distributed servicesStrong knowledge of microservices, service communication, and eventual consistencyExperience with event-driven systems like queues, pub/sub, event busesExpertise designing RESTful or GraphQL APIs including versioning, auth, rate limiting, and documentationProficiency in SQL or NoSQL database design, optimization, and tuningTest-driven development with unit, integration, and end-to-end testing experienceCI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, version control, and collaborative developmentStrong AI development workflowValued ExperienceFamiliarity with Node.js/TypeScript, AWS (Lambda, EventBridge, SQS, S3, API Gateway, DynamoDB), MongoDB/Mongoose, and event-driven patternsSaaS platform and multi-tenant architecture experienceReal-time communication (SMS, email, webhooks) and integration platformsExperience in restaurant tech, hospitality, or local business softwareAI & Machine Learning work including LLM API integration, prompt engineering, AI-powered features, and cost/latency optimizationInfrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform, etc.), monitoring (New Relic, DataDog), and API documentation tools (Swagger/OpenAPI)Our Tech StackBackend: Node.jsPlatform: AWSDatabase: MongoDB Atlas with MongooseEvent System: Kafka & SNSMonitoring: New Relic, CloudWatch LogsDeployment: GitHub Actions CI/CD#OvationWe may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.