Sr Staff Software Engineer

Senior Staff Software Engineer

The team

Five9 has led the cloud revolution in contact centers, helping organizations transition from legacy premise-based solutions to the cloud. The cloud contact center market has become the hot space for innovation in real-time communications and is the tip of the spear for the application of Artificial Intelligence, especially Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM). Our Studio Product Engineering team is responsible for developing a suite of leading-edge AI products built upon industry-leading AI tech from vendors like OpenAI, Google, IBM Watson and Amazon and integrate into Five9 wider well-developed microservices platform.

Our vision is nothing less than to reimagine the experience of connection between end users and the brands which serve them. Our AI agents will offer self-service which delights and accomplishes tasks at super-human speeds, while also blending in live human agents for the many cases when a human touch is needed. Our AI agents will assist the live agents too, and help supervisors and managers get the most out of their mix of human and AI labor.

Role purpose

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will serve as a hands-on technical leader and role model within the team, contributing to the architecture, design and development of software across multiple products to meet both business and technology objectives. This role requires someone who can wear multiple hats by aligning perspectives across teams, making smart trade-offs, and driving progress toward shared goals. You will be an active contributor of software, review the work of others, and be on the leading edge on the usage of AI for rapid software development.

You will provide architectural guidance, lead performance optimization efforts, and enhance the reliability and quality of our products and services. We're looking for someone who is passionate about operational excellence, eager to dive into complex production issues alongside their peers and committed to building systems that the entire engineering organization can depend on. A strong technical background in distributed and scalable systems on cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure is essential.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership :

Take deep ownership of all aspects of product software engineering, including feature development, production incident management, addressing technical debt, and contributing to technology roadmaps and solution architecture. Provide strong technical leadership and mentorship to local engineering teams and serve as the go-to expert for engineering leaders on complex technical challenges.

Feature and Architecture Ownership :

Take full ownership of the end-to-end design and implementation of features, including technical backlog refinement, scope definition, and ensuring timely delivery. Propose architectural changes and lead technical discussions with engineers, product managers, and quality teams to drive alignment and deliver high-impact solutions. Be accountable for the software lifecycle from development to deployment to operation in production, and be obsessed with the final experience for the customer. Ensure observability is built in, and proactively identify and resolve issues – functional and non-functional – which impact the end customer experience.

Hands-on Development :

Design and implement features by writing clean, maintainable code based on product requirements and customer feedback. Establish and maintain coding standards, shared libraries, and practices. Review code from others. Use AI to aid the development of software and guide others to be effective with it.

Production Incident resolution :

Lead development investigations and conduct deep root cause analyses for production incidents. Deliver timely resolutions with a focus on speed, quality, and long-term stability.

Cross-functional collaboration and Communication :

Work closely and effectively with leadership – including the Five9 CTO -, architecture, customer support, product management, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) and professional services teams. Strong communication skills – including a strong command of both written and spoken English - are essential for this role. You will regularly update senior leadership on team progress and the overall health of our systems. During production incidents, you’ll be responsible for clearly explaining technical issues to non-technical stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands the impact and the resolution timeline.

Required Skills

Technical Expertise

12 + years of experience in designing and developing distributed, and scalable systems on a cloud-based platform (GCP, AWS or Azure) in a SaaS company. Hands-on expertise in cloud-native backend microservices with Java & backend frameworks like Spring Boot.

Able to create architecture designs and workflows for discussion and implementation.

Highly proficient in a variety of programming languages, including but not limited to Java, Python, JavaScript or others as required.

Expertise server-side technologies, databases (SQL and NoSQL), caching and back-end frameworks like Spring Boot.

Strong experience with microservices architecture, distributed systems and running mission critical software in production

Strong Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, CI / CD pipelines and containerized deployment processes

Understanding of web application security principles and best practices

Experience with version control (Git), CI / CD pipelines, and deployment processes

Experience with cloud-based architectures separating compute from storage

System Operations

Experience with production incident management and debugging complex issues

Knowledge of monitoring tools, logging systems, and application performance management like New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus etc.

Understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization

Experience with library dependency management and upgrade planning

Familiarity with security vulnerability scanning and remediation processes

Educational qualifications

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field (Master's degree preferred).

Desirable :

Experience with PHP & Laravel

Experience with web development technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and modern front-end frameworks like Vue.js or React.

Experience with Contact Centre, IVR, Virtual Agents, VoIP and telecommunications service providers is advantageous.