Senior Engineer - Core Services Backend

Impact

As a Senior Engineer on the Core Services team at Shipt, you will play a key technical role in building, scaling, and maintaining the mission-critical backend systems that power our retailer management ecosystem. You will take ownership of complex technical tasks and features, ensuring our core applications are production-ready, highly scalable, resilient, and performant across multi-region environments.

Working closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and Principal/Staff Engineers, you will contribute directly to our technical roadmap, lead feature execution within our microservices framework, and mentor junior and mid-level engineers to elevate the overall quality and engineering standards of the team.

*What You’ll Need to Be Successful*

Technical Execution & Architecture

• Hands-On Development: Drive hands-on development on complex features, multi-region services, and core microservices built solidly in Go (Golang), leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Apache Kafka, Postgres, Redis, and Kubernetes.
• Scalable System Design: Design high-performance, low-latency microservices and event pipelines adhering to SOLID design principles and RESTful API standards, anticipating future scale while ensuring solutions support automation, security, resiliency, and maintainability.
• Database & Caching Optimization: Design robust relational data models in Postgres, write clean SQL migrations, optimize complex queries, and implement effective caching strategies using Redis to minimize database load.
• Pragmatic Problem Solving & Tooling: Approach engineering challenges as an outcome-driven problem solver first, treating modern development tools—including AI coding assistants and agentic workflows—as force multipliers in your technical toolbox while taking complete ownership of system design, correctness, security, and long-term code quality.
• Code Quality & Best Practices: Consistently write and teach others to write idiomatic Go code with testability, readability, edge-case handling, and robust error management in mind. Conduct thorough code reviews to maintain team engineering standards.
• Technical Documentation: Document key architecture and design decisions, creating high-level and low-level system diagrams to articulate complex workflows clearly.
• Security Ownership & Code Scanning: Approach code and infrastructure with a security-first mindset, utilizing automated code scanning tools to identify vulnerabilities and advocate for swift remediation.
• Frameworks & Refactoring: Identify when internal libraries or service patterns need updating or refactoring, actively contributing to internal Shipt shared tooling and microservice templates.

Operational Health & Observability

• Production Readiness: Ensure all team solutions are deployable, production-ready, multi-region resilient, and equipped with sufficient product observability for high reliability and rapid incident recovery.
• Observability & SLIs/SLOs: Proactively identify and resolve gaps in observability metrics, logging, and distributed tracing dashboards. Use operational data and observability metrics to drive stability improvements, define business-level SLIs/SLOs, and tune alerting for rapid incident response.
• Troubleshooting & Incident Response: Take strong ownership of incident recovery and root-cause resolution across team services, implementing long-lasting fixes to prevent recurring failures.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Technical Roadmap: Contribute meaningfully to the team’s technical roadmap and assist in planning, estimating, and managing multi-sprint feature deliveries.
• Mentorship & Coaching: Serve as a mentor and coach to Engineers, Associate Engineers, and Interns, fostering a growth mindset and elevating technical skills across the team.
• Cross-Functional Communication: Act as a primary technical contact point for the team, answering technical questions for cross-product partners and product managers while keeping stakeholders informed of technical impact.

Technical Skills & Qualifications

• Experience: 4+ years of professional software development experience building and maintaining production-grade distributed systems.
• Core Technical Stack: Demonstrated expertise writing production backend services in Go (Golang), with strong experience in Apache Kafka, Postgres, Redis, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Kubernetes.
• Data Persistence & Caching: Deep understanding of relational database schema design, SQL query performance optimization in Postgres, and caching strategies in Redis.
• Distributed Systems & API Design: Strong proficiency in microservices architecture, RESTful API design, SOLID design principles, asynchronous event-driven messaging, and multi-region service resilience.
• Testing & Quality Focus: Strong expertise in automated unit, integration, and regression testing frameworks, leveraging quality metrics to continuously improve test coverage.
• Process & Execution: Experience working in fast-paced Agile environments, with the ability to take action and make swift decisions with limited data points.
• Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Skills & Education

This list includes key skills used in this job but is not inclusive of all skills needed for the role. Please see any required education below.

Agile Methodology, Apache Kafka, API Design, Distributed Systems, Go Programming LanguageBachelor's Degree or equivalent experience | Required

Pay Range:

$95,800-$119,000

Please note that the pay range above is a guideline, and individual total compensation will vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location.

Work Arrangement

To foster connection while offering continued flexibility, hybrid team members have the following in-office expectations:

Hybrid roles in Birmingham, AL typically work in-office at least 2 days per week, with core in-office days on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Hybrid roles in Minneapolis, MN typically work in-office at least 1 day per week on either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Hybrid roles in San Francisco, CA typically work in-office at least 1 day per week between Monday and Thursday.

Certain roles may require in-office presence on a full-time basis. Please work with your recruiter to learn more about the classification of this role.

About Shipt

Shipt is a retail tech company that connects people to reliable, high-quality delivery with a personal touch. Shipt connects customers to the things they want from the stores they love, retail businesses to more satisfied customers, and workers to new earning opportunities.

At Shipt, we aim to put our team first to boost a sense of belonging, spark opportunities for growth, provide unique benefits and commit to giving back to our communities in ways that make life better, both personally and professionally. We understand that our service, our culture, and our connection to our communities are only made better by every single person who shows up to work here every day. Learn More.

Shipt is an independently operated, wholly owned subsidiary of Target Corporation and available in more than 5,000 U.S. cities. Shipt was founded and is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. For more information, please visit Shipt’s company site at Shipt.com.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion or religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, military or veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law.

*Please inform your recruiting contact upon initial connection if you need a reasonable accommodation. If you need assistance filling out a job application, please complete this form.

For technical interviews, Shipt uses an online coding platform. In the event you may need a reasonable accommodation to use the online coding platform, please connect with your recruiter.*

Employees (and eligible family members) are covered by medical, dental, vision and more. Employees may enroll in our company’s 401k plan. Employees will also be eligible to receive discretionary vacation for exempt team members, paid holidays throughout the calendar year and paid sick leave. Other compensation includes eligibility for an annual bonus and the potential for restricted stock units based on role.