Job Description

Job Title: Senior Staff Backend Engineer 
Location: Tempe, AZ (Hybrid – In-office Tuesdays & Thursdays)

Are you a backend engineering pro who enjoys building reliable systems, mentoring others, and helping shape the technical direction of a growing platform? If you’re ready to lead by example and make an impact, we’d love to meet you.

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our e-commerce team in the automotive space. In this hybrid role, you’ll help build and maintain critical backend services, partner with product and UX teams, and support the ongoing performance of our platform that handles thousands of requests per minute. We’re a fast-moving, tech-forward team that values clean code, smart architecture, and real collaboration.

 What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead backend projects, providing technical guidance and hands-on coding support.
• Help design and maintain scalable APIs, services, and distributed systems.
• Build tools and pipelines for importing and managing automotive parts data (like PIES and ACES).
• Work closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and Designers to develop solutions that bring real value to users.
• Own technical decisions for key features, balancing speed, scope, and quality.
• Mentor other engineers and help raise the technical bar across the team.
• Write clean, secure, and maintainable code that scales well.
• Support the reliability and uptime of our platform in a high-traffic SaaS environment.
• Be involved in the full product lifecycle—from discovery and design to launch and support.
• Join us in-person twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and collaborate remotely the rest of the time.

 What We’re Looking For:

• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field—or 15+ years of real-world experience in software development.
• 7+ years of backend experience, ideally in Java or PHP.
• Experience leading technical projects or engineering teams in an Agile environment (Scrum or Kanban).
• Solid grasp of object-oriented design, software architecture, and computer science fundamentals.
• Experience with SaaS or e-commerce systems—especially those built for scale and high uptime.
• A track record of sticking with roles and showing growth (we appreciate stability and progression).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and cloud deployments (we use AWS), and tools like Docker/Kubernetes.
• Experience with APIs, microservices, and relational databases.
• Comfortable working in hybrid settings and collaborating across time zones and departments.
• Excellent problem-solver with strong communication skills—you’ll be talking to both tech and non-tech folks.
• Independent, motivated, and always looking to improve things.
• Git user and generally familiar with Agile tools and methods.
• Some experience with frontend frameworks (like Angular or React) is a plus, but not required.
• Knowledge of DevOps practices or tools is also a nice bonus.

Extra Credit (Preferred but Not Required):

• A Computer Science degree earned between 2008–2012.
• Experience working on or building marketplace platforms.

Additional Info:

• This role requires working onsite in Tempe, AZ every Tuesday and Thursday.
• Our interview process includes a short personality and critical thinking assessment.

If you're excited about backend leadership and want to work in a team that values ownership, improvement, and getting things done, we’d love to hear from you.

To explore more tech jobs, visit www.phoenixstaff.com.