We are seeking an experienced & passionate Senior Backend Engineer to join our Product Engineering team. In this role, you will be a key contributor to the architecture, design, & implementation of the foundational services that power our entire e-commerce & wedding planning product suite. You'll work on the services that power our vendor marketplace, wedding registry, planning tools, & other core user experiences, tackling challenges in scalability, performance, & reliability that have a direct impact on our users.

You are a great fit if you are a product-minded engineer who thinks about the end-user & is passionate about building robust, well-designed backend systems. You enjoy collaborating with cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, & other engineers, to translate complex product requirements into scalable technical solutions.

What You'll Do

• Design & Architect: Lead the design & development of scalable, secure, & maintainable backend microservices & APIs within our service-oriented architecture.
• Build & Implement: Write high-quality, efficient, & testable code, primarily in Java, deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Collaborate: Partner closely with product managers, front-end engineers, & other stakeholders to define features & deliver compelling solutions for our couples & vendors.
• Mentor & Uplift: Mentor other engineers through thoughtful code reviews & design discussions, actively contributing to a culture of shared knowledge & growth.
• Own & Operate: Take ownership of the full software development lifecycle, from technical design to deployment, monitoring, & maintenance in a production environment.
• Scale & Optimize: Proactively identify performance bottlenecks & scaling issues, & re-architect systems to ensure they can handle growing traffic & data volumes.
• Innovate: Stay current with emerging technologies & industry trends, particularly within the AI ecosystem, & advocate for their adoption where they can improve our platform & processes.

Who You Are

• Experienced Engineer: You have 5+ years of professional experience in backend software development, with a proven track record of shipping high-quality, scalable products.
• Strong Coder: You possess deep expertise in Java & are proficient with modern development tools, including AI coding assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Code). Experience with other languages like Scala is a plus.
• System Designer: You have strong experience with distributed systems, microservices architecture, & designing RESTful APIs.
• Database Proficient: You are experienced with both a relational data store such as PostgreSQL & one or more NoSQL data stores (e.g., Redis, MongoDB).
• Cloud Native: You have hands-on experience designing, building, & operating production systems on a major cloud platform, such as AWS.
• Collaborative & Communicative: You have excellent communication skills & can clearly articulate complex technical ideas to both technical & non-technical audiences.
• Problem Solver: You are a pragmatic & analytical thinker who is adept at breaking down complex problems & driving them to resolution. A B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or a related field is preferred.

Salary Range

The salary range for this role is $150,000 - $200,000. This full-time role will be hybrid at our office in NYC (Tuesdays & Thursdays).

About Zola

We're Zola, the wedding company that will do anything for love. We're reinventing the wedding planning & registry experience to make the happiest moment in our couples' lives even happier. From engagement to wedding & decorating your first home, Zola is there, combining compassionate customer service with modern tools & technology all in the service of love.

We built our entire platform from the ground-up in 2013, & quickly became the fastest-growing wedding company in the country. Our team has deep experience creating award-winning online & mobile products that are helpful, intuitive, & simply magical. We're proud to have investor partners including Female Founders Fund, Comcast Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Canvas Ventures, Thrive Capital & Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.

We are passionate about supporting all forms of love, & we're proud of our thriving community of over 2 million couples. We strive to hire a team that is as beautifully diverse as the couples getting married today, & we encourage individuals from every race, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, marital status, religion & perspective to apply. Zola will always be a place where every employee, couple, wedding guest, wedding vendor, & partner will be respected & accepted & valued.

Our headquarters is in NYC. Come work with us!