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Realtor.com · 9 hours ago

Sr. Backend Software Engineer

Austin, Texas, United States

Full-time

Hybrid

Senior Level

5+ years exp

Realtor.com® is a leading platform in the online real estate industry, connecting millions of consumers with expert guidance. They are seeking a Sr. Backend Software Engineer to design, build, and operate their notification platform, ensuring reliable and efficient communication for users.

PropTechReal EstateRental Property

H1B Sponsor Likely

Responsibilities

Own core backend services that power notification preferences, home alerts, and notification delivery for initiatives like Project Columbus (Updated Notification Preferences and Alerts by Geo)

Work across event-driven architectures, real-time delivery pipelines, and storage systems that serve notification history and campaign traffic at scale

Partner closely with CRM Marketing, Search, Mobile teams to deliver reliable, observable, and cost‑efficient notification experiences

Design, Build, and Operate Backend Services

Design and implement scalable backend services and APIs for notification preferences, notification delivery, and notification storage, using modern backend languages and frameworks (e.g., Node.js/TypeScript, Java/Kotlin, or Python) on AWS

Extend and evolve our event-driven architecture for notifications, leveraging Kafka, SQS, and AWS services to reduce latency and improve reliability for push and email sends

Build and maintain data models and storage layers (e.g., MongoDB Atlas, Redis) to support high-volume reads/writes, notification history, and preference lookups at scale

Implement and harden CI/CD pipelines on our paved path (CircleCI, GitHub, Argo) to enable safe, frequent deployments with strong automated test coverage

Own the health of the services you build, including metrics, logging, tracing, dashboards, and alerts using tools like New Relic and Splunk, and participate in an on‑call rotation for Notifications services (Pigeon, Notification Center, Preferences APIs, and pipelines)

Improve system reliability and performance by driving projects to simplify architectures (e.g., replatforming Pigeon to an event‑driven model, improving DLQ handling, and replacing legacy step functions and throttlers with SQS consumers)

Contribute to cost and resiliency initiatives, including logging/CloudWatch optimization, secrets migration to AWS Secrets Manager/Skyway Vault, and scaling strategies for notification databases and infrastructure

Author and maintain runbooks and operational playbooks for on‑call responders, covering incident response, rollbacks, backfills, and replay strategies for notification workloads

Partner with CRM Marketing and Product to translate business requirements for campaigns, alerts, and notification preferences into robust technical designs and incremental delivery plans

Collaborate with Search, CPS, Identity, Orchestration, and Data teams to ensure notification flows (e.g., Alerts by Geo, saved search alerts, preference syncs) are correct, observable, and performant end‑to‑end

Participate in and lead technical design discussions, documenting trade‑offs and making recommendations that balance delivery speed, reliability, and total cost of ownership

Contribute to team rituals (planning, grooming, retros, incident reviews), helping to de‑risk projects via spikes/POCs, clear recommendations, and proactive communication on risks and timelines

Write clear, maintainable, and well‑tested code, and participate actively in code reviews to raise the bar on quality, security, and performance

Mentor and support other engineers on the team through pairing, design reviews, and feedback, especially around backend design, observability, and operational discipline

Contribute to shared standards for Notifications and Consumer (patterns, libraries, templates, and best practices) to reduce friction and improve consistency across services

Qualification

Backend SystemsNode.js/TypeScriptAWS ServicesEvent-Driven ArchitectureCI/CD PipelinesMongoDB AtlasRedisObservability ToolsCommunication SkillsCollaboration SkillsMentorship

Required

5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on backend systems and distributed services in production environments

Experience with TypeScript/JavaScript/Node.js

Proficiency in at least one modern backend language such as Node.js/TypeScript, Java/Kotlin, or Python, and a track record of building secure, testable, maintainable services and APIs

Experience with event-driven architectures and streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka/MSK, SQS), including designing resilient producers/consumers and handling retries, DLQs, and backfills

Hands-on experience with AWS (e.g., Lambda, ECS/EKS, S3, API Gateway, IAM, SQS) and Infrastructure‑as‑Code frameworks (e.g., CloudFormation, Terraform, or similar)

Experience with NoSQL and cache technologies such as MongoDB Atlas and Redis (or comparable systems), including schema design and performance tuning for high‑volume workloads

Strong CI/CD and testing mindset, including building and extending pipelines (e.g., CircleCI + GitHub + Argo), and applying unit, integration, and contract testing to services and data flows

Solid observability skills, using tools such as New Relic and Splunk (or equivalents) to define SLIs/SLOs, build dashboards, and reduce mean time to detection and recovery

Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work closely with product, marketing, analytics, and other engineering teams, and to communicate clearly about risks, trade‑offs, and timelines

Ability to operate in an on‑call rotation in US time zones, owning production incidents end‑to‑end and driving follow‑up improvements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience

Preferred

Experience with notifications, messaging, or campaign delivery systems (push, email, in‑app notifications), including rate limiting, preference management, and history storage

Experience with CRM and marketing platforms such as Braze, Cordial, Hightouch, or similar activation tools, and integrations between internal data platforms and external providers

Background in real‑time personalization or alerts (e.g., saved searches, alerts by geo, behavioral triggers) where correctness, latency, and relevance are critical

Familiarity with security and compliance practices, including secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Skyway Vault), AppID tagging, and cloud cost/usage governance

Experience contributing to tech modernization and platform re‑architecture efforts (e.g., migrating serverless workflows to EKS‑based services, improving throughput and state recovery for high‑volume pipelines)

Benefits

Inclusive and Competitive medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverage

Family forming benefits

13 Paid Holidays

Flexible Time Off

8 hours of paid Volunteer Time off

Immediate eligibility into Company 401(k) plan with 3.5% company match

Tuition Reimbursement program for degreed and non-degreed programs

1:1 personalized Financial Planning Sessions

Student Debt Retirement Savings Match program

Free snacks and refreshments in each office location

Company

Realtor.com

Glassdoor3.4

Realtor.com is an online platform that allows users to search for real estate property records, houses, condos and lands. It is a sub-organization of Move.

Founded in 1996

Santa Clara, California, USA

1001-5000 employees

https://www.realtor.com/

H1B Sponsorship

Realtor.com has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)

Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship

Represents job field similar to this job

Trends of Total Sponsorships

2025 (26)

2024 (62)

2023 (26)

2022 (83)

2021 (88)

2020 (52)