Staff Software Engineer, Backend

Cresta unlocks the true potential of the customer experience, turning every conversation into a competitive advantage. Cresta’s unified AI platform combines conversational AI agents, real-time human agent augmentation, and comprehensive conversation intelligence to drive revenue and efficiency gains across every channel. The world’s leading companies, including United Airlines, Cox Communications, and Marriott, use Cresta to power world-class customer experiences every day. Born from the Stanford AI Lab, Cresta has raised more than $270 million from the world’s leading investors, including a16z, Greylock, and Sequoia. Cresta’s leadership includes some of the leading minds in AI today. Our CEO, Ping Wu , founded and led Google's Contact Center AI and Vertex AI platforms before joining Cresta to build the future of AI-driven customer experiences. Over the next few years, AI is going to redefine how people all over the world interact with businesses every day. Come build that future at Cresta. About the Role: We're seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design and evolution of our backend systems that power Cresta's AI platform. You'll architect scalable, distributed systems that enable enterprise AI agents to deliver exceptional customer experiences through voice and digital channels. This role offers the opportunity to shape technical strategy, mentor engineers, and build production systems at the intersection of AI and enterprise software. This is a generic backend engineering hire. Team matching will be conducted during the later stages of the hiring process based on your interests, experience, and team needs. You'll have the opportunity to explore different team areas and find the best fit for your skills and career goals. Key Responsibilities: Architecture & Leadership: Lead the architecture and evolution of large-scale distributed backend systems, driving cross-team technical initiatives from design through production Scalable Systems Design: Build high-performance, fault-tolerant backend services supporting real-time AI agents, conversation intelligence, and enterprise integrations AI/ML Collaboration: Partner with ML engineers to operationalize AI capabilities, building the runtime infrastructure and orchestration systems that power AI agents at scale Data & Storage Solutions: Design and optimize data storage and retrieval systems for real-time analytics and insights Production Excellence: Drive continuous improvements in system performance, cost efficiency, and scalability to handle high-volume production workloads Technical Mentorship: Mentor senior engineers, influence technical roadmap, and raise the bar for engineering quality across teams Required Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field 8+ years building scalable backend systems in production environments Proven experience leading large-scale distributed system architecture with deep understanding of consistency, fault tolerance, state management, and concurrency Strong proficiency in at least one major programming language (Python, Go, Java, C++, or similar) Strong API design expertise (REST, gRPC) and service-oriented architectures Experience with database design and optimization across SQL and NoSQL systems Hands-on experience with containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker) Cloud platform expertise (AWS, GCP, or Azure) with strong security knowledge Experience building developer-facing tooling (CLIs, SDKs, testing frameworks) Strong expertise in system reliability, observability, monitoring, and production ownership (including on-call) Excellent communication skills for technical decision-making, cross-functional collaboration, and mentorship High standards for code quality, testing, and engineering best practices Preferred Qualifications: Effective use of AI-assisted coding tools (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, etc.) to significantly boost development productivity Deep understanding of real-time communicati