As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will architect, build, and maintain scalable backend services, collaborate across teams, and improve system performance and observability.
Created in 2002 by Marc Eckō, Complex is a leading global youth entertainment network showcasing the evolution of major pop culture categories, including streetwear and style, music, sneakers, and sports. Complex is a juggernaut in the content and culture space, delivering unprecedented global reach.
Complex is the world’s definitive cultural commerce, content, and experiential platform. We have created an all-new operating system built for the next generation, seamlessly integrating discovery, inspiration, community, and shopping. The company represents an expansion of the original vision with a deep understanding of convergence culture and its impact on contemporary society.
Whether through video, long-form editorial, or social content, Complex tells stories that engage dynamic conversation with our communities. Our internet-breaking cover stories document the heroes of culture and take them to the next level through product collaboration and shoppability.
Complex has become experts in creating immersive environments at our IRL experiences and cultural events. ComplexCon is our flagship festival bringing together the world’s most influential brands and artists for an unforgettable weekend of style, sneakers, art, design, food, music, inspiration and more.
Join us to help redefine the way people shop, while building a global marketplace that moves at the speed of culture. Complex is committed to building a high performing team that is passionate about what they do and the communities we serve.
Everyone at Complex truly believes in the company and its mission; it’s a requirement for working here. There is synergy within the teams that make Complex what it is, a well-oiled machine. Employees are at the forefront of the company's success because every one of us is given the opportunity to provide suggestions, feedback, and direction.
About the Role
- As a Senior Backend Engineer at Complex, you’ll play a key role in scaling our commerce and content platforms to serve millions of customers. Working within a domain-focused team, you’ll lead backend initiatives that drive high performance, reliability, and extensibility across our systems.
What You'll Do
- Architect, build, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs using Node.js, Go, and AWS infrastructure.
- Design and document service contracts that integrate commerce, content, personalization, and user systems.
- Collaborate closely with frontend, mobile, infrastructure, and product teams to deliver well-integrated features.
- Contribute to our shift toward a modular, event-driven architecture using message queues (Kafka, etc.).
- Drive initiatives to improve performance, availability, and fault tolerance in high-traffic services.
- Write robust tests and implement monitoring and alerting to support operational excellence.
- Participate in sprint planning, backlog grooming, and post-release reviews, bringing a backend perspective to product development.
- Triage and resolve production issues, participate in root cause analysis, and improve system observability.
- Contribute to documentation, tooling, and development workflows that improve backend team velocity and quality.
Who you are
- 5+ years of backend development experience in production systems.
- Proficiency in Node.js and/or Go.
- Experience designing RESTful or GraphQL APIs.
- Strong grasp of system design, testing, and debugging in cloud environments (AWS preferred).
- Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, or similar container orchestration tools.
Bonus Points if…
- Experience with event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.).
- Prior work integrating with Shopify or other headless commerce platforms.
- Exposure to observability tooling and performance optimization.
- Experience mentoring other engineers or leading technical initiatives.
What we Offer
- Best in class health, dental, and vision insurance
- Healthcare FSA
- Dependent Care FSA
- Commuter Benefits FSA
- Short-term/long-term disability and life insurance
- Paid Parental leave
- 401k with 4% match
- Pet Insurance
- Legal and Identity Theft Plans
- Vacation time and sick days
We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
The above statements cover what are generally believed to be principal and essential functions of the job. Specific circumstances may allow or require some incumbents assigned to the job to perform a different combination of duties.
Complex participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.
Top Skills
AWS
Docker
Go
GraphQL
Kafka
Kubernetes
Node.js
Restful Apis
Complex NTWRK Los Angeles, California, USA Office
Los Angeles, CA , United States, 90028
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