Job Description:
Our Opportunity
Chewy is seeking a Software Engineer III to lead the development and scaling of highly available, distributed software systems that power critical business capabilities and customer experiences! As a high-performing backend engineer, you will drive the architecture, design, and implementation of scalable services, APIs, and event-driven platforms that support complex operational workflows and high-volume transactions. In this role, you will collaborate closely with engineering and business partners from multiple functions. You will solve challenging technical problems, improve system reliability and performance, and enable long-term platform scalability. This senior technical leadership role offers broad exposure across multiple organizations. It provides the opportunity to influence engineering strategy, establish guidelines, mentor engineers, and develop a high-performing, collaborative engineering culture.
About You
The ideal candidate holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent industry experience. You excel at leading engineering teams and driving backend architecture and system design for scalable, distributed platforms. Our systems leverage loosely coupled services, real-time event processing, vendor integrations, CQRS/event-driven architecture, and modern CI/CD practices. You will work with technologies including Java, JavaScript, Node.js, GraphQL, DynamoDB, SNS/SQS, AWS ECS/Fargate, Kubernetes, Kafka, and AWS Lambda to build and scale critical platform capabilities. In this role, you will lead the development and deployment of scalable services, applications, and automation frameworks that improve operational efficiency and business workflows. You also bring hands-on experience using AI coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Claude within real engineering workflows, with a practical understanding of where they accelerate delivery and where human judgment remains critical.
What You'll Do:
- Work closely with product teams and partners on several initiatives.
- Build and develop distributed systems using Java 8+, Spring Boot, and AWS components like Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, S3, and API Gateway.
- Own features end‑to‑end: from RFC and architecture review through coding, deployment, and post‑launch measurement.
- Lead on‑call rotations; drive root‑cause analysis, observability improvements, and operational excellence.
- Coach and improve engineers through design sessions, code reviews, and learning opportunities.
- Influence product direction by translating ambiguous business problems into resilient, scalable solutions.
- Advocate for standard methodologies in testing, secure coding, CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform/CloudFormation), and performance tuning.
- Collaborate multi-functionally with product, data science, fulfillment ops, and partner engineering teams to align roadmaps with business outcomes.
What You'll Need:
- Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, related field, or equivalent experience.
- 7+ years of professional experience as a Software Engineer and/or team lead.
- 7+ years of experience developing scalable, distributed microservice applications using Java, JavaScript, AWS and/or Spring Boot.
- Experience debugging and troubleshooting applications using tools SNS/Kafka, Dynatrace or AWS Cloudwatch
- Hands-on experience designing, building, and deploying scalable, highly available systems.
- Hands-on experience designing, building, and deploying scalable, highly available systems.
- Ability to function as a hands-on engineer—comfortable writing complex code and debugging challenging issues.
- Strong understanding of professional software engineering practices across the full development lifecycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control, build processes, testing, and operations.
- Proficiency in core computer science fundamentals: object-oriented design, data structures, algorithms, problem-solving, and complexity analysis.
- Participate in on-call rotations and operational perfection
Bonus:
- Experience in e-commerce.
- Familiarity with Agile methodologies such as Scrum or XP.
- Experience with configuration and deployment tools such as Terraform, along with knowledge of infrastructure, debugging, networking, compute, storage, and virtualization.
- Nice to have knowledge of ReactJS and Typescript
The base salary range for this role is $141,000 - $225,000.00.
- The specific salary offered to a candidate may be influenced by a variety of factors including but not limited to the candidate’s relevant experience, education, and work location. In addition, this position is eligible for 401k and a new hire and annual equity grant. C08+ positions may also be eligible for annual bonus.
We offer different types of insurance and benefits, such as medical/Rx, vision, dental, life, disability, hospital indemnity, critical illness, and accident. We offer parental leave, family services benefits, backup dependent care, flexible spending accounts, telemedicine, pet adoption reimbursement, employee assistance program, and many discounts including 10% off pet insurance and 20% off at Chewy.com.
Exempt salary team members have unlimited PTO, subject to manager approval. Team members will receive six paid holidays per year. Team members may be eligible for paid sick and family leave in compliance with applicable state and local regulations.
Chewy is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, gender, citizenship, marital status, religion, age, disability, gender identity, results of genetic testing, veteran status, as well as any other legally-protected characteristic. If you have a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or similar law, and you need an accommodation during the application process or to perform these job requirements, or if you need a religious accommodation, please contact CAAR@chewy.com.
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