Software Developer – Data Services

Software Developer – Data Services
- Hybrid, Cary, NC

We’re a leader in data and AI. Through our software and services, we inspire customers around the world to transform data into intelligence – and questions into answers.

If you’re looking for a dynamic, fulfilling career with flexibility and a world‑class employee experience, you’ll find it here. We’re recognized around the world for our inclusive, meaningful culture and innovative technologies by organizations like Fast Company, Forbes, Newsweek and more.

The Customer Intelligence R&D Data Engineering team builds cloud‑native backend services and platform capabilities that support CI360. We design systems that handle high‑volume event data, real‑time processing, and service orchestration across multiple tenants and value streams. This is a backend engineering role operating at scale—not a traditional data pipeline role.

Our platform is evolving toward:

• Cloud‑first, containerized architectures
• Event‑driven, distributed backend systems
• Deep integration of AI capabilities into core services and workflows

• Architect and implement scalable, cloud‑native backend services (Java‑based) deployed on AWS
• Design for resilience, elasticity, and multi‑tenant scale using modern cloud patterns
• Build and evolve distributed systems leveraging services such as EKS, Lambda, Step Functions, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB, and Open Search
• Develop event‑driven architectures that support real‑time data processing and orchestration
• Own the design of service interfaces, APIs, and backend abstractions that other teams depend on
• Work with open table formats (e.g., Apache Iceberg) to enable:
• Reliable, ACID‑compliant data access across distributed systems
• Scalable, cloud‑native analytical and operational workloads
• Seamless interoperability between backend services, data pipelines, and AI workloads
• Apply Generative AI to backend engineering challenges, such as:
• Intelligent workflow orchestration
• Automated decisioning and routing
• AI‑assisted data transformation and service optimization
• Enhance cloud‑native observability—metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting—to ensure production readiness and operational excellence

• Be encouraged to participate in open‑source projects on behalf of SAS.
• Ensure all applicable security policies and processes are followed to support the organization’s secure software development goals.
• Embrace curiosity, passion, authenticity and accountability. These are our values and influence everything we do.

• 5+ years of experience building backend or distributed systems in cloud environments
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field (or equivalent experience)
• Strong proficiency in Java, with experience delivering production services
• Hands‑on experience with cloud‑native architectures (AWS or similar), including:
• Microservices or service‑oriented architecture
• Containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS/EKS)
• Managed cloud services (Lambda, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB, etc.)
• Experience with Python for cloud automation, AI integration, or tooling
• Exposure to streaming architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, Flink)
• Strong SQL and relational database expertise (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, AWS RDS), with experience designing efficient, scalable data access layers and optimizing performance in production systems.
• Demonstrated ability to design scalable, resilient, cloud‑deployed systems

• Equivalent combination of related education, training and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications.

• Innovation – You must be creative and devise unique solutions to complex problems that provide a competitive advantage for our products.
• Technology Savvy – You must keep apprised of emerging industry trends and technology to consistently recommend modern approaches to our challenges.
• Complexity – Work on problems of diverse scope where analysis of data requires evaluation of identifiable factors. Demonstrates good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for obtaining solutions.
• Supervision
  - Works independently; receives minimal guidance on day‑to‑day work and new projects or…