Principal Backend Engineer, Search & Personalization Optimization

Attentive® is the AI-powered mobile marketing platform transforming the way brands personalize consumer engagement. Attentive enables marketers to craft tailored journeys for every subscriber, driving higher recurring revenue and maximizing campaign performance. Activating real-time data from multiple channels and advanced AI, the platform personalizes content, tone, and timing to deliver 1:1 messages that truly resonate.
With a top-rated customer success team recognized on G2, Attentive partners with marketers to provide strategic guidance and optimize SMS and email campaigns. Trusted by leading global brands like Neiman Marcus, Samsung, Wayfair, and Dyson, Attentive ensures enterprise-grade compliance and deliverability, supporting trillions of interactions across more than 70 industries. To learn more or request a demo, visit www.attentive.com or follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), or Instagram.
Attentive’s growth has been recognized by Deloitte’s Fast 500, Linkedin’s Top Startups and Forbes Cloud 100 all thanks to the hard work from our global employees!
About the Role Our Search Platform team is the backbone of Attentive’s data infrastructure, processing, storing, and optimizing data at massive scale and speed. We handle billions of events from over 100 million customers daily, enabling near-real-time data insights and AI-driven capabilities through our Data, Optimization, and ML Platforms. Joining our team offers a high-growth career opportunity to work with some of the world’s most talented engineers in a high-performance and high-impact culture.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be responsible for leading the design, development, and deployment of distributed data applications and contributing towards the betterment of engineering culture at Attentive. You will partner closely with cross-functional teams to create our high-impact search platform, delivering personalized experiences for our clients and their customers. Your role will also include mentoring engineers, driving technical excellence, and contributing to strategic planning for the engineering department.  
This team is building the search platform that empowers our clients to curate audience segments, which Attentive uses across the platform to personalize content. By delivering more relevant and engaging messages, this drives higher performance for our clients and better experiences for their customers.

What You'll Accomplish

• Lead the design and development of search and personalization platforms that optimize audience segmentation and drive client engagement
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and design teams to ensure the delivery of high-quality, innovative solutions
• Contribute to company-wide initiatives, including process improvements, infrastructure advancements, and system architecture that scale and support personalization at scale
• Provide mentorship and technical leadership, promoting engineering best practices and fostering team growth
• Simplify complex projects to ensure efficiency and reduce the workload, enabling faster and more impactful results

Your Expertise

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on high-throughput, distributed systems
• Strong proficiency in Java, Python, or Go, and a deep understanding of object-oriented design, algorithms, and optimization
• Proven expertise in data modeling, segmentation, and audience targeting using relational and non-relational databases
• Experience building and optimizing applications for personalization at scale
• Track record of architecting and maintaining high-performance, secure, and reliable infrastructure
• Ability to navigate ambiguous environments, turning business goals into clear, actionable plans
• Exceptional communication skills, able to work seamlessly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity building segmentation platforms 0-1, AI-driven personalization systems, or marketing automation tools

What We Use

• Our infrastructure runs primarily in Kubernetes hosted in AWS’s EKS
• Infrastructure tooling includes Istio, Datadog, Terraform, CloudFlare, and Helm
• Our backend is Java / Spring Boot microservices, built with Gradle, coupled with things like DynamoDB, Kinesis, AirFlow, Postgres, Planetscale, and Redis, hosted via AWS
• Our frontend is built with React and TypeScript, and uses best practices like GraphQL, Storybook, Radix UI, Vite, esbuild, and PlaywrightOur automation is driven by custom and open source machine learning models, lots of data and built with Python, Metaflow, HuggingFace 🤗, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Pandas

You'll get competitive perks and benefits, from health & wellness to equity, to help you bring your best self to work.
For US based applicants:- The US base salary range for this full-time position is $193,800 - $285,000 annually + equity + benefits- Equity is a substantial part of the total compensation package- Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location
#LI-HB1
Attentive Company ValuesDefault to Action - Move swiftly and with purposeBe One Unstoppable Team - Rally as each other’s championsChampion the Customer - Our success is defined by our customers' successAct Like an Owner - Take responsibility for Attentive’s success
Learn more about AWAKE, Attentive’s collective of employee resource groups.
If you do not meet all the requirements listed here, we still encourage you to apply! No job description is perfect, and we may also have another opportunity that closely matches your skills and experience.
At Attentive, we know that our Company's strength lies in the diversity of our employees. Attentive is an Equal Opportunity Employer and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Our policy is to provide equal employment opportunities for all employees, applicants and covered individuals regardless of protected characteristics. We prioritize and maintain a fair, inclusive and equitable workplace free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Attentive is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need any assistance or reasonable accommodations, please let your recruiter know.