Senior Software Engineer II
At Compass, our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. Founded in 2012, we’re revolutionizing the real estate industry with our end-to-end platform that empowers residential real estate agents to deliver exceptional service to seller and buyer clients.
As one of the fastest-growing technology companies in a massive industry, we're on a mission to build an exceptional engineering team and a transformative operating platform that will redefine real estate. We are building a high-caliber talent pool of Backend Senior Engineers to lead technical initiatives and scale foundational systems across several key domain areas.
Our Key Focus Areas & Disciplines
Based on your background, technical strengths, and interests, you will have the opportunity to align with one of our core backend-driven disciplines:
- Agent Client Tools – Buy Side: Building scalable backend services, business logic, and API workflows that power client-facing tools, guiding buyers through every step of their transaction journey from initial home search to close.
- CRM – Comms: Architecting and scaling high-throughput communication engines (email, SMS, push notifications) that drive real-time, event-driven, and personalized interaction between agents and clients at scale.
- CRM – Contacts: Designing high-performance backend data models, relationship graphs, and contact-management APIs that serve as the high-availability single source of truth for millions of client records.
What You Will Do
- Architect & Scale Backend Systems: Design, build, and maintain high-performance, distributed, event-driven microservices and cloud infrastructure designed to scale cleanly with high throughput.
- Drive Technical Delivery: Independently define, decompose, and lead the delivery of complex backend systems, database schemas, and robust API contracts.
- Incorporate Intelligent Automation & Pipelines: Build modern backend patterns, integrating AI models, streaming data pipelines, and telemetry systems to automate workflows.
- Champion Engineering Excellence: Perform rigorous code and design reviews, write comprehensive automated unit and integration test suites, and continuously improve system performance and reliability.
- System & Domain Ownership: Act as a subject matter expert for your domain, producing clear architectural documentation (specs, runbooks, schemas) and maintaining ownership of service reliability across the full lifecycle.
- Collaborate & Mentor: Partner with product managers and frontend engineering teams to deliver seamless API integrations, resolve systemic bottlenecks, and actively mentor peers.
What We Look For
- Education & Experience:
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- BS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of professional software development experience, with a proven track record of architecting and delivering complex backend systems autonomously (candidates with 3+ years of fast-tracked execution are also encouraged to apply).
- Backend Expertise:
- Strong proficiency in core backend languages such as Go or Java.
- Experience with Python is a major plus (highly valued for data pipelines and AI/LLM integrations).
- Deep understanding of RESTful/gRPC API design, microservices patterns, and data architecture (SQL/NoSQL).
- Experience with event-driven architectures and message brokers like Kafka is highly preferred.
- System Architecture & Cloud: Hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating cloud-native microservices on major cloud providers (AWS preferred, GCP, or Azure).
- Modern SDLC Practices: Strong familiarity with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and Agile methodologies.
- Communication: Excellent verbal and written technical communication skills, with a strong sense of empathy for engineering peers and real estate end-users.
Compensation: The base pay range for this position is $176,000-$196,100; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Bonuses and restricted stock units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of benefits. Base pay is based on market location. Minimum wage for the position will always be met.
Perks that You Need to Know About:
Participation in our incentive programs (which may include eligible cash, equity, or commissions). Plus paid vacation, holidays, sick time, parental leave, and recharge leave; medical, tele-health, dental and vision benefits; 401(k) plan; flexible spending accounts (FSAs); commuter program; life and disability insurance; Maven (a support system for new parents); Carrot (fertility benefits); UrbanSitter (caregiver referral network); Employee Assistance Program; and pet insurance.
Office