Staff Software Engineer - Backend Data Engineering

📋 Description • Own the end-to-end architecture of FourKites’ next-generation data platform, designing distributed systems that ingest, process, and serve billions of real-time supply-chain events daily for Fortune 500 shippers, carriers, and retailers. • Lead cross-functional squads across US and India time-zones to deliver zero-downtime releases every two weeks, translating complex logistics problems into elegant backend services written in Java/Kotlin, Python, and Scala. • Spearhead the migration of legacy monoliths to cloud-native, event-driven microservices on AWS (EKS, Kinesis, Lambda, DynamoDB, Aurora) while cutting infrastructure cost by 30 % and improving p99 latency from 800 ms to <200 ms. • Design and implement petabyte-scale data pipelines using Spark, Flink, and Kafka that power predictive ETA models, dynamic freight pricing, and real-time visibility dashboards relied on by Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Nestlé. • Champion AI-accelerated development—embed LLM-based code generation, automated test synthesis, and intelligent alerting into the SDLC to boost team velocity by 25 % without sacrificing quality or security. • Establish and enforce engineering excellence standards: peer-reviewed design docs, chaos-engineering game days, mandatory unit/integration test coverage >85 %, and SLO-driven incident response that keeps availability above 99.9 %. • Mentor principal and senior engineers through architecture reviews, pair programming, and career-growth OKRs; create reusable libraries and golden-path templates that reduce onboarding time for new hires from weeks to days. • Partner directly with product managers, data scientists, and customer success to translate high-stakes customer pain points into technical epics, ensuring every feature ships with measurable business impact (e.g., $2 M annual savings per client). • Continuously evaluate emerging technologies—Rust-based stream processors, vector databases for similarity search, or serverless GPU inference—to keep FourKites three steps ahead in the $18 T global logistics market. • Present technical vision at quarterly board reviews and industry conferences, turning complex backend innovations into compelling narratives that secure executive buy-in and attract top-tier talent to the team.