Backend Engineer; Streaming and AI Infrastructure

Role Overview

As part of our Application Infrastructure org, this is a team building Coupang’s next-generation Real-Time Streaming & AI Platform that powers the end customer website and mobile apps.

We are looking for a visionary Staff Software Engineer to lead the architectural design of a platform capable of processing over 100k+ events per second with sub-second, end-to-end latency. This system will serve as the central nervous system for Coupang, enabling real-time product and customer data and instant personalization. You will build a system that doesn't just meet industry standards but sets them, ensuring 5-6 nines availability while leveraging AI to optimize data flows and automate complex system behaviors.

• Architect for Velocity:
  Lead the end-to-end design of a distributed streaming engine. You will Build the Best Team and Help Them Grow by setting the gold standard for high-throughput, low-latency architectural integrity.
• Define Extreme Performance:
  Design for 5-6 nines (99.9999% availability) at a throughput of 100k+ events/sec. You will Dive Deep into JVM tuning, memory management, and network I/O to ensure sub-second latency across global clusters.
• AI-Driven Streaming:
  Integrate AI/ML models directly into the stream processing path. Implement predictive scaling and intelligent load balancing to ensure we Wow the Customer through seamless, real-time platform responsiveness.
• Solve Hard Problems:
  Address challenges related to distributed consistency, at times, exactly-once processing guarantees, and back pressure management. You must Be Data-Driven to validate architectural decisions against massive, bursty traffic patterns.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, Math, or a closely related field
• 4 years of experience in backend software development
• Proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework
• Experience working in cloud environments, particularly AWS
• Demonstrated experience in building and maintaining highly available, distributed systems

• Expert-level experience in Cassandra, TiDB, or DynamoDB
• Expert-level proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework
• Demonstrated experience in building and maintaining highly available, distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS)
• Experience with high-volume messaging systems (e.g., Kafka, SQS)
• Extensive
  
  Experience:
  
  10+ years of professional software development experience building backend infrastructure that supports global-scale, real-time traffic
• Performance Expert:
  Proven track record of optimizing JVM applications for ultra-low latency (