Senior Staff Backend Engineer (Service Mesh)

Company Introduction   We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.    We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.   Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.     Role Overview  As a Senior Staff Data Centre Observability and Site Reliability Engineer, you will design, build, and operate scalable observability and reliability solutions for large-scale datacenter infrastructure. This role focuses on developing high-performance monitoring and telemetry platforms, ensuring system reliability, and driving operational excellence through automation, performance optimization, and SRE best practices. The ideal candidate will work across the full service lifecycle—design, deployment, and continuous improvement—while collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance visibility, resilience, and efficiency of critical systems. What You Will Do OBSERVABILITY AND MONITORING * Design, implement, and maintain observability solutions for datacenter infrastructure, including monitoring, logging, alerting, and telemetry systems. * Develop, deploy, and operate large-scale observability and telemetry platforms with a focus on real-time monitoring, high performance, and scalability. * Own and contribute to the full lifecycle of observability services—from design and development to deployment and ongoing optimization. * Build and enhance monitoring systems to ensure high availability, reliability, and performance of infrastructure. * Create and manage dashboards, alerts, and reports to provide clear visibility into system health, performance, and capacity trends. SITE RELIABILITY ENGINEERING (SRE) * Apply SRE principles and best practices to improve reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency of datacenter services. * Develop and maintain automation for infrastructure provisioning, monitoring, and system management. * Lead root cause analysis (RCA) and post-incident reviews, driving corrective actions to prevent recurrence and improve system resilience. PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION * Analyze system and application performance across the datacenter infrastructure to identify bottlenecks and improvement areas. * Implement optimization strategies to enhance performance, efficiency, and resource utilization. COLLABORATION * Partner with cross-functional engineering teams to understand observability and reliability requirements and deliver effective solutions. * Collaborate with hardware and software vendors to evaluate, integrate, and optimize new technologies within the ecosystem. SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE * Ensure observability and reliability solutions adhere to organizational security policies and industry standards. * Implement and maintain appropriate security controls to safeguard infrastructure, systems, and data. TROUBLESHOOTING AND SUPPORT * Provide hands-on support for observability and reliability issues, including debugging complex hardware and software problems. * Develop and maintain documentation, including troubleshooting guides and operational best practices, to support efficient issue resolution. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT * Stay current with emerging trends, tools, and technologies in observability and SRE, and incorporate them into the platform. * Continuously enhance the scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency of datacenter services through proactive improvements.   Basic Qualifications * Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.  * 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with a heavy emphasis on distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, or platform operations.  * Proven experience in managing and optimizing large-scale datacenter environments * Strong proficiency in Go or Python, with a deep understanding of networked systems and performance optimization.  * Expert-level knowledge of Kubernetes internals (scheduling, controllers) and containerization ecosystems.  * Proven experience with load balancing, service mesh, and request routing at scale.  * Proficiency in observability tools and technologies (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack). * Experience with SRE practices and tools (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform). * Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and their observability and reliability services   Preferred Qualifications  * Prior experience building infrastructure specifically for LLM inference or large-scale training clusters.  * Familiarity with inference, including mixed precision, kernel tuning, or custom hardware accelerators.  * Experience managing hybrid-cloud or multi-AZ deployments across AWS, Azure, or GCP.  * Experience operating in regulated environments with strict security and compliance requirements   Type of work model  * Hybrid Our Hybrid work model: Coupang hybrid work model is designed to enable a culture of collaboration that acts a catalyst to enrich the experience of employees. Employees are required to work at least 3 days in the office per week, with the flexibility to work from home 2 days a week, depending on the role requirement. Some businesses may require more time in office due to nature of work.   Details to consider  * Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.    Privacy Notice   * Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below. https://privacy.coupang.com/en/land/jobs/

WHO WE ARE Verkada is transforming how organizations protect their people and places with an integrated, privacy-sensitive AI-powered platform that includes solutions for video security, access control, air quality sensors, alarms, intercoms, and visitor management.  We’ve got serious momentum in the market: more than 30,000 customers (including 100+ of the Fortune 500), a $5.8B valuation [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/verkada-capitalg-valuation-security.html], more than $1 billion in annualized bookings, and backing from CapitalG, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Felicis Ventures, Next47 and more. Physical AI is one of the most consequential technology shifts of our time, and Verkada is at the center of it. You can look at all kinds of communities to see our platform’s impact in the world. It's the retailer that uses our agentic AI to deter theft before it happens. The warehouse that uses AI-powered alerts to make sure its team is protected on the floor with proper PPE. The school that’s alerted to a threat in real-time and triggers a lockdown in seconds, not minutes. We’re rapidly scaling this impact: today, more than 2 million Verkada devices are deployed across 170+ countries.  ABOUT THE ROLE We focus on building and enhancing tools and systems that empower our developers, sales, and support teams. As a Backend Engineer on our team, you'd focus on designing new tools and improving quality of existing ones. Whether you’re early in your career or bring years of experience, there’s an opportunity to make a significant impact. We are committed to a thriving in-office culture. This role requires you to be onsite at our HQ in San Mateo, CA. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Doing common actions in the cloud rather than from developer machines * Improving handling of licenses * Separating the monolith support tool into smaller a more manageable tools * Improving the feature flags system * Building tools that use AI * Building tools to improve security and privacy * Contributing to open-source systems used by Verkada WHAT YOU BRING * Must have a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, or similar technical field of study * Experience and enthusiasm for learning about new infrastructure products, features, and strategies * Comfortable with working at the frontier of infrastructure and software development * Experience in Python and/or Go * Experience with one of the major cloud platforms (preferably AWS) * Strong written and verbal communications * Experience with Terraform is preferred * Experience with Kubernetes is preferred * Experience with a service mesh such as Istio is preferred US EMPLOYEE BENEFITS Verkada is committed to fostering a workplace environment that prioritizes the holistic health and wellbeing of our employees and their families by offering comprehensive wellness perks, benefits, and resources. Our benefits and perks programs include, but are not limited to: * Healthcare programs that can be tailored to meet the personal health and financial well-being needs - Premiums are 100% covered for the employee under at least one plan and 80% for family premiums under all plans * Nationwide medical, vision and dental coverage * Health Saving Account (HSA) with annual employer contributions and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) with tax saving options * Expanded mental health support * Paid parental leave policy & fertility benefits * Time off to relax and recharge through our paid holidays, firmwide extended holidays, flexible PTO and personal sick time * Professional development stipend * Fertility stipend * Wellness/fitness benefits * Healthy lunches provided daily * Commuter benefits ADDITIONAL INFORMATION * We do sponsor and take over sponsorship of employment visas for this role. If we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa. Annual Pay Range At Verkada, we want to attract and retain the best employees, and compensate them in a way that appropriately and fairly values their individual contribution to the company. With that in mind, we carefully consider a number of factors to determine the appropriate starting pay for an employee, including their primary work location and an assessment of a candidate's skills and experience, as well as market demands and internal parity. A Verkada employee may be eligible for additional forms of compensation, depending on their role, including sales incentives, discretionary bonuses, and/or equity in the company in the form of restricted stock units (RSUs) Below is the annual on-target earnings (OTE) range for full-time employees for this position, comprised of base compensation and commissions (if applicable). Estimated Annual Pay Range $130,000—$280,000 USD VERKADA IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER As an equal opportunity employer, Verkada is committed to providing employment opportunities to all individuals. All applicants for positions at Verkada will be treated without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law. Your application will be handled in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Policy [https://www.verkada.com/privacy/candidate-privacy-policy].