Software Developer - Backend - US

About the Role

• We believe that communication belongs to everyone. TextNow is redefining how people connect by combining simplicity, intelligence, and accessibility. We are a team of curious builders using technology to make communication more affordable and powerful for millions of users every day. Our platform serves as a lifeline for those seeking reliable, low-cost connectivity, and we are committed to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in modern telecommunications.
• As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will be at the forefront of this mission, architecting and building the next generation of our distributed systems. You will work on systems that handle billions of messages and calls annually, ensuring that every interaction is seamless, secure, and instantaneous. Your contributions will directly impact the daily lives of our diverse user base, from students to professionals, all of whom rely on TextNow for essential communication.

What You'll Do

• Design, develop, and sustain high-performance, scalable backend services using Go microservices and modern cloud-native tooling. You will write clean, testable, and efficient code that serves as the backbone of our platform.
• Lead architectural modernization and modularization to improve scalability, observability, and developer velocity. This includes decomposing existing monolithic structures into well-defined, independently deployable services that can evolve at their own pace.
• Define and own the entire lifecycle of your systems: API design, data modeling, deployment via CI/CD, live-traffic monitoring, integration and load testing, telemetry and data analysis, experiment design for A/B tests, and continuous iteration based on real-world performance data.
• Influence and evolve our architecture by proposing and leading initiatives to decompose monoliths, migrate legacy code, build shared frameworks, and create reusable service components. You will also evaluate new backend technologies and lead their adoption across the engineering organization.
• Apply AI-driven tools and automation frameworks to speed up development, code analysis, testing, and reliability. You will leverage machine learning models to predict system bottlenecks and automate routine operational tasks.
• Leverage intelligent telemetry, analytics, and optimization pipelines to improve service performance and resilience. You will build dashboards and alerts that provide deep insights into system health and user behavior.
• Define observability standards, telemetry pipelines, and fault-tolerance strategies for production-grade distributed systems. This includes implementing distributed tracing, structured logging, and metrics collection to ensure end-to-end visibility.
• Partner closely with product, mobile, and data teams to deliver seamless, high-quality experiences across all platforms. You will participate in cross-functional planning sessions and contribute to the product roadmap from a technical perspective.
• Drive technical discussions, mentor developers at all levels, and influence strategic direction across backend and infrastructure domains. You will be a key voice in architecture reviews and design sprints.

Who You Are

• A technical leader with the ability to create and lead roadmaps and initiatives that align to high-level business objectives. You can translate company goals into concrete engineering projects and inspire your team to execute them.
• Deep expertise in Go, with additional experience in PHP for legacy systems considered a bonus. You understand the nuances of concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization in Go.
• Proven track record of architecting modular, maintainable, and high-performance microservices that operate at scale. You have successfully migrated systems from monoliths to microservices in a previous role.
• Strong background in system design, observability, and performance optimization. You are comfortable designing systems that handle millions of requests per second with sub-millisecond latency.
• Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, Argo CD, Protobuf, CI/CD pipelines, and auto-scaling architectures. You can deploy and manage services in a containerized environment with confidence.
• Experience using AI and automation to improve developer velocity, reliability, or system intelligence. You have integrated code generation tools, automated testing frameworks, or predictive analytics into your workflow.
• A collaborative technical leader who thrives in fast-moving environments and mentors others to excel. You believe that the best solutions come from diverse perspectives and open communication.
• Passionate about building resilient, intelligent, and highly scalable backend systems that serve millions of users. You take pride in the reliability and performance of the systems you build.
• You architect for observability, reliability, and production-readiness: you understand instrumentation, SLOs and SLIs, fault-tolerance, runbooks, incident triage, scalable telemetry pipelines, and production diagnostics for backend systems. You treat operations as a first-class concern.
• You have been a technical leader beyond just an individual contributor. You have influenced roadmap decisions, contributed to multi-team initiatives, mentored and led developers, driven culture and process improvements, and interfaced with senior developer and product leadership effectively.

Compensation

• The expected base salary range for this role is: United States (All other areas not listed above): USD $123,900 - $249,000.
• United States (NYC, CT, NJ, Seattle, LA, San Diego): USD $136,300 - $273,900.
• United States (San Francisco / Bay Area): USD $148,700 - $298,800.
• Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. We conduct regular market analysis to ensure our compensation remains competitive.
• Our goal is to offer a competitive package that reflects the impact and expertise you bring to the team. We believe in rewarding excellence and providing transparency in all compensation discussions.

More about TextNow

• Our culture: We are proud of the culture that we have built at TextNow, but one of the most common questions we hear is how we continue to sustain it as the world and the company continues to change. The reality is that we are only able to keep up because each and every TextNovian contributes to our culture through being involved, by living our values, sharing feedback, embracing change, and more. Our culture is not a static document; it is a living, breathing entity that evolves with every new hire and every new idea.

Our Values

• Customer Obsessed: We strive to have a deep understanding of our customers. Every feature we build, every decision we make, starts with the question: how does this serve our users?
• Do Right By Our People: We treat each other with fairness, respect, and integrity. This extends to our colleagues, our partners, and our community.
• Accept the Challenge: We adopt a Yes, We Can mindset to achieve ambitious goals. We see obstacles as opportunities to innovate and grow.
• Act Like an Owner: We treat this company like it is our own because it is. We take ownership of our work, our mistakes, and our successes.
• Give a Damn: We are deeply committed and passionate about our work and achieving results. We do not cut corners, and we care deeply about the quality of our output.

Equal Opportunity

• We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic. We actively seek out diverse perspectives and believe that our differences make us stronger as a team.