Sr. Software Engineer (Backend)

The Team + The Role The Core team builds features and platform capabilities that power critical areas of the Pendo product experience. The team supports high-stakes customer use cases, shapes how systems evolve over time, and creates a more consistent experience across the platform. This work sits in complex product areas where delivery speed, system reliability, and long-term maintainability all matter. As a Sr. Software Engineer, you will own complex problem spaces and drive them forward independently. You will apply strong engineering judgment to ambiguous challenges, partner closely with Product and Design, and stay accountable to outcomes, not just output. You will break large efforts into small, continuously shippable increments, bring others along with you, and leave the codebase better than you found it. This role is based in our Raleigh office. What this looks like day-to-day Feature ownership: Own complex, ambiguous features end-to-end by structuring work into small, independently shippable increments. Drive delivery with clarity, strong judgment, and accountability for customer and system impact. Production engineering: Write production-ready code and define testing approaches based on risk and system impact. Use safe rollout patterns to reduce risk and enable incremental delivery. Incident response: Respond quickly when production issues arise in your area. Resolve issues and drive follow-up improvements that prevent recurrence. AI-enabled development: Use AI tools as a core part of your daily workflow for code generation, debugging, test writing, and task decomposition. Help raise the bar for how the team uses AI in development workflows. Technical collaboration: Deliver actionable code reviews, accurate documentation, and constructive contributions to technical discussions and planning sessions. Help teammates make better decisions through clear, direct input. Continuous improvement: Identify recurring friction points in code, tests, tooling, or process and proactively improve them. Look for opportunities to make development faster, safer, and more maintainable. Team clarity: Create context that helps the people around you move faster. Write commit messages, notes, and documentation that allow teammates to understand decisions without relying on verbal handoffs. Who You Are Beyond the qualifications, we hire through a specific lens. These aren't buzzwords; they're the things we'll actually look for in how you talk about your work. You're a builder, not a maintainer. You're most energized when there isn't a clear path yet, and you get to define it. You don't wait for direction; you identify gaps, shape solutions, and drive them forward. At Pendo, great Senior Software Engineers don't just follow instructions; they operate as strategic advisors, influencing decisions, guiding stakeholders, and elevating how we work. You're AI-curious - genuinely. You're not using AI tools occasionally. You're rewiring how you work around them. You're faster, sharper, and more prolific because of it, and you bring that energy to everything — how you approach your work, how you prep, how you communicate, how you think. We want someone who sees AI as a multiplier, not a shortcut. Must-haves 5+ years of experience as a Software Engineer, with a track record of delivering customer-facing SaaS product features in a production environment. Demonstrated ability to break ambiguous work into small, deliverable increments and move it forward independently despite ambiguity. Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages, including Go, Java, Python, or C++. Deep understanding of scalable web architecture, API design, and performance optimization. Experience with cloud platforms, including AWS or GCP, and both SQL and NoSQL databases. Experience designing and writing unit, integration, and end-to-end tests, with a clear sense of when and how to apply each. Familiarity with safe deployment and rollout patterns, including feature flags and c