Director of Backend Engineering

About the role

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

The Application Infrastructure team builds the platform that provides the OLTP, Messaging, Caching foundations for all of Coupang's services. We accelerate Coupang's business through our industry-leading platform, on which our developers can build amazing products. Our work spans the critical infrastructure layers that power the company - ensuring our services are secure, reliable, performant, and scalable. We think beyond technologies and standards, to take a business-wide perspective.

We are seeking an engineering leader to lead our platform efforts. This team empowers our developers by providing a Common Data Services layer that underpin our customer-facing product. You will work with senior leaders and architects to drive strategy and execution in your area and collaborate with your peers on their areas as needed.

You will model excellent communication, collaboration and execution within our team and the larger Technical Infrastructure organization. The successful candidate will be someone who can hire and retain the best, build an effective organization, work across groups to deliver broad business impact, and is not afraid to dive deep into the code when needed.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience in technologies such as Cassandra, Kafka, Redis; strong knowledge of Kubernetes; an excellent background in distributed systems; and a track record in Technical Infrastructure. Experience in an eCommerce environment is a plus. Come join us!

What You Will Do

• Help build a great team by hiring the best and actively shaping team culture.
• Drive the evolution of our platform by overseeing strategy, creating roadmaps, driving execution, and working for company-wide adoption.
• Drive alignment across key stakeholders on strategic roadmaps and deliverables.
• Partner with teams across the company to proactively identify business and technical opportunities.
• Drive execution through technical and organizational complexities, balancing strategic goals and immediate impact.
• Dive deep when necessary to lead by example and help with high priority projects.
• Contribute to the Coupang engineering community through cross-company initiatives.
• Inspire teams to raise the bar on design, development and Operational Excellence.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related technical field.
• 8 years professional experience working in software engineering teams, or 10+ years' experience with advanced degree.
• 5 years' experience managing engineers.
• Experience leading design and development of large scale distributed systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Recent experience with distributed databases, messaging, caching, workflow systems, K8S.
• Experience in collaborating with cross-functional teams to define mission, vision, and roadmaps.
• Experience handling multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment and leading the delivery of large-scale services for complex business offerings.
• Masters or PhD degree in computer science or other related technical field.
• Hands-on experience building security protocols and/or systems.
• Experience working with Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes, gRPC and Istio

Pay & Benefits

• Our compensation reflects the cost of living across several US geographic markets. At Coupang, your base pay is one part of your total compensation.
• The base pay for this position ranges from $159,000/year to $324,000/year. Pay is based on several factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills and experience.

General Description of All Benefits

• Annual bonus is 0-20% of the base salary
• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life, AD&D insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & Health Savings Account (HAS)
• Long-term/Short-term Disability
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program
• 401K Plan with Company Match
• 18-21 days of Paid Time Off (PTO) a year based on the tenure
• 12 Paid Holidays
• Paid Parental leave
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• MTV- [Free] Electric Car Charging Station

General Description of Other Compensation

"Other Compensation" includes, but is not limited to, bonuses, equity, or other forms of compensation that would be offered to the hired applicant in addition to their established salary or wage scale.

Recruitment Process and Others

Recruitment Process

• Application Review - Phone Interview - Onsite (or Virtual Onsite) Interview - Offer
• The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.
• Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage.

Details to Consider

• This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
• Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.
• Coupang does not discriminate against disabled applicants or those with veteran status. We are proud to offer equal opportunities for all applicants.