Backend Engineer, Toolbox Diagnostics, Vehicle Software

About the role

Backend Engineer, Toolbox Diagnostics, Vehicle Software | Tesla (Vehicle Software)

Location: PALO ALTO, California | Req ID: 279041 | Job Type: Full-time

What to Expect

At Tesla, Service Engineering sits at the intersection of firmware and hardware design, service, diagnostics, manufacturing, quality, and reliability. We multiply the impact of service on diagnostics, repairs, and maintenance—and reduce how often those interventions are needed. Our mission is to diagnose customer vehicles accurately, reliably, and as quickly as possible, with feedback loops that continuously improve diagnostics. Our vision is to have a diagnostic strategy and software that ensures our vehicles do not have to come to service for diagnosis.

As a Backend Engineer on the Toolbox Diagnostics Engineering team, you will specify, build, and maintain the next generation of diagnostic tooling for our vehicles, robots, and energy products. You will design and own backend systems that power diagnostic workflows at scale—APIs, data services, messaging, data pipelines, and infrastructure—while improving observability and reliability. You’ll work on a multidisciplinary product team alongside product managers, engineers, operations, and data analysts.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and operate backend services that power diagnostic tooling for vehicles, robots, and energy products
• Architect scalable backend systems: service boundaries, data models, APIs, and reliability patterns that support a growing user base and product surface
• Own persistence and data access across SQL and NoSQL stores; design schemas, queries, and access patterns for performance and correctness
• Build and integrate messaging and event-driven workflows using tools such as Kafka, Temporal, or equivalent
• Build and operate ETL pipelines that transform firmware artifacts into structured, queryable data for downstream services
• Improve diagnostic simplicity, support regulatory compliance needs, and help enable more proactive diagnostic capabilities
• Build and maintain cloud-native infrastructure with Docker and Kubernetes, including service deployment, scaling, and operational health
• Design and maintain automated release tooling and CI/CD pipelines, deploying through GitOps with GitHub Actions and ArgoCD
• Raise observability and reliability: logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and on-call-friendly operability
• Partner with product, operations, and data stakeholders to ship durable backend capabilities—not one-off scripts

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• 3+ years of backend software development experience
• Strong proficiency in a high-level language such as Python, Go, or similar
• Experience designing and evolving large backend web systems—APIs, services, and architecture tradeoffs (consistency, latency, scaling, failure modes)
• Solid knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g. PostgreSQL/MySQL and DynamoDB/Redis or similar)
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (deployments, services, config, troubleshooting production workloads)
• Experience with messaging and event-driven systems such as Kafka, Temporal, or similar
• Experience operating services in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure, or equivalent)
• Experience with DevOps tooling such as Docker, Kubernetes, Github Actions, ArgoCD, or similar
• Clear communication and collaboration skills

Benefits

Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire:

• Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction
• Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits
• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution
• Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• 401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)
• Employee Assistance Program
• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays
• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
• Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance
• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
• Tesla Babies program
• Commuter benefits
• Employee discounts and perks program
• Earned Wage Access: Real-time pay access paid daily, subject to eligibility and schedule (applicable for below Sr. Managers levels)

Expected Compensation$140,000 - $252,000/annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefitsPay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.