Staff Backend Engineer

Join Alvys, an early-stage company ambitiously transforming the $800B US freight industry. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will be a technical leader driving the architecture and development of our cutting-edge SaaS platform. Your role is pivotal in enhancing freight transportation logistics by streamlining processes and driving significant advancements in a sector crucial for the movement of goods. Leveraging your extensive experience in backend development and technical leadership, you will elevate our engineering practices and product capabilities, ensuring our solutions meet the highest standards of quality and innovation.

This role is ideal for a technical leader skilled in API design, database technologies, and operational system development. You will lead substantial technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and integrate technical solutions with advanced research and data methodologies to drive efficiency and optimize complex operational challenges. Depending on team needs, this role may include managing a smaller team of engineers (such as specialized functions like DevOps or Data teams), allowing you to balance technical contributions with people leadership—typically spending approximately 50% of your time on hands-on technical work.

Transportation logistics is a complex and fragmented domain ripe for technological revolution. At Alvys, you'll be at the forefront of automating and standardizing a sector that moves trillions of dollars' worth of goods annually, predominantly by truck, yet lacks modern tools and solutions. Your leadership will help bridge this gap, bringing innovative technologies to a traditionally underserved industry.

Alvys is on a mission to revolutionize transportation logistics. Combining hands-on industry experience with a world-class technical vision, we're building a multi-tenant SaaS platform that's becoming an essential tool for transportation companies. Our commitment to excellence and innovation drives us to create solutions that address real-world challenges in the freight industry.

Engineering Principles:

1. Build for Real-World Impact — Our users rely on Alvys to solve real problems, not abstract ones. Every feature we ship is designed to reduce friction, increase efficiency, and drive tangible results for the people moving freight every day.
2. Extreme Ownership and Empowerment — Ownership extends beyond building—it means being accountable for quality, reliability, and customer impact. If it's in production, it's yours—bugs, uptime, and results.
3. Technology Debt is Strategic, Not Accidental — Technical debt is a strategic choice, not an oversight. We incur it deliberately when it unlocks speed, learning, or market advantage. Our architecture remains clean, maintainable, and scalable as we grow.
4. Simplicity Scales; Complexity Costs — Logistics is inherently complex, but our technology shouldn't be. We prioritize simplicity in our architecture, leveraging modularity and well-defined service boundaries to reduce cognitive load.
5. Radical Transparency — We democratize data and make it accessible across all functions to drive alignment and decision-making. Transparency also means feedback—we systematize constructive feedback loops to ensure growth.

Engineering Culture:

• Move Fast, Learn Fast — Speed is our advantage, but we move fast intentionally. We bias for action, assume positive intent, and treat every mistake as a learning opportunity.
• Own the Outcome — Every engineer owns outcomes, not tickets. We take responsibility end-to-end—identifying problems, delivering solutions, and ensuring they last.
• Engineering-Led, Customer-Driven — Engineering leads by shaping technical strategy, but never in isolation. Designers, PMs, and Engineers share context and decisions, keeping customer outcomes at the center.
• Pragmatism Over Purism — Elegant code matters, but business impact matters more. We choose solutions that scale, are maintainable, and solve real customer problems—not theoretical ones.
• People Over Heroics — We don't reward burnout or always-on behavior. Sustainability is a feature, not a luxury. If someone needs to slow down, unplug, or take care of life outside work—that's expected.

Our cloud-native environment leverages Azure, .NET/C#, CosmosDB, Cognitive Search, and a suite of Azure services. Our front end utilizes JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, Dart, and Flutter. Monitoring and alerting are handled by Azure Monitor & Application Insights, alongside numerous integrations with external services.

• Technical Leadership:
  • Lead substantial technical initiatives, such as redesigning and implementing major platforms or infrastructures that impact various engineering teams.
  • Drive technical vision and architecture decisions across engineering teams, creating well-thought-out design documents that guide long-term work.
  • Research, create proofs of concept, and evangelize new technologies that enhance team capabilities and align with business objectives.
  • Dive into unfamiliar code and effect meaningful change, demonstrating adaptability and mastery across the technology stack.
• System Ownership and Excellence:
  • Own the technical architecture and delivery of large-scale, business-critical systems, ensuring they meet the highest standards for stability, performance, and scalability.
  • Think holistically about system architecture, reducing complexity to achieve more with less effort.
  • Create plans to mitigate outages and ensure robust, reliable production systems.
• Mentorship and Team Development:
  • Mentor engineers across teams to accelerate their career growth and encourage participation in technical discussions.
  • Share knowledge through tech talks, design reviews, and code reviews to improve development skills across the organization.
  • Depending on team structure, may manage a smaller team of engineers (e.g., DevOps or Data teams), balancing hands-on technical work with people leadership responsibilities.
• Process and Quality:
  • Challenge and improve team processes, looking for ways to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Review projects critically to ensure they're appropriately broken down, prioritized, and well understood by all teams.
  • Lead interviewing efforts for mid- and senior-level candidates.
• Cross-Team Collaboration:
  • Build effective relationships with non-engineering functions, including product, design, operations, and business development.
  • Communicate technical concepts to non-technical teams and translate business logic into engineering deliverables.
  • Identify and resolve dependencies across the organization before they become blockers.

• A Bachelor’s degree in either Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
• 8+ years of experience in Backend Development with a proven track record in demonstrating skills in large-scale software development and lifecycle management.
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language, such as C#, Java/Kotlin, JavaScript/TypeScript, Haskell, etc.
• Competency in both Relational and NoSQL databases, with experience working and supporting such systems in a production environment.
• Experience with at least one major cloud provider (Azure, AWS, GCP, or similar).

• Demonstrated experience in designing, developing, and maintaining large-scale systems, with a proven track record of leading the development of complex, high-traffic backend systems.
• Strong technical leadership skills with experience mentoring and growing engineers at various levels. Experience managing smaller engineering teams is a plus.
• Deep familiarity with Azure DevOps for CI/CD is highly regarded.
• Extensive experience working with C# and ASP.NET is highly beneficial.
• Prior experience in logistics or transportation systems is highly valued, offering a unique perspective on our industry challenges and solutions.

Alvys is an equal opportunity employer and as such, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws.

We are dedicated to growing a diverse team of highly talented people. We’re dedicated to building a workplace where we give each other the strategies, support, and space we each need to thrive—believing in and bringing out the best of everyone.

If you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, whether it be alternate forms of material, accessible meeting rooms, etc., please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

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