Senior Staff Back-end Engineer (eCommerce Engineering)

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we are collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar commerce industry from the ground up and establishing an unparalleled reputation for being leading and reliable force in South Korean commerce.

We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been at since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.

Team Overview

The Service Engineering team builds, operates, and scales the core back-end platforms that power the most critical pages across Coupang's mobile apps and web — including Home, Search, Category, Detail Page, Cart, Checkout, and Order.

Our mission is to create a next-generation data-serving platform that is highly scalable, highly available, and robust, capable of handling millions of user requests globally. We serve as the backbone of the Coupang shopping experience, and our systems are expanding beyond the Korean market to global markets such as Taiwan.

As a team, we focus on:

Platform scalability — designing systems that reliably handle massive traffic at low latency across multiple regions

Engineering excellence — maintaining best-in-class standards in code quality, architecture, testing, and operational excellence

AI-driven effectiveness — leveraging AI and emerging technologies to improve engineering productivity, software quality, and delivery velocity

Global expansion — building a platform architecture that generalizes across markets without sacrificing performance or reliability

Role Overview

We are looking for a Senior Staff Back-End Engineer to serve as the technical leader for the data-serving domain within Service Engineering. In this role, you will own the area-level technical strategy and roadmap, lead projects across multiple groups, and advise senior engineering and product leaders on strategic decisions. You will proactively identify and solve systemic technical problems spanning your area — navigating major risks, conflicting constraints, and non-technical complexity — while establishing outcome-based measurement to validate that AI and automation gains translate into real quality and cost-effectiveness. You will align technical and AI strategy with adjacent organizations, drive consensus on contentious topics, and guide the career growth of the most senior talent in your scope.

Basic Qualifications

10+ years of professional backend development experience (excluding internships)

7+ years of experience in Java/Kotlin/Spring-based service development and 3+ years in architecture leadership

Proven experience designing and operating web-scale microservices; hands-on experience with AWS and Kubernetes

Deep expertise in diagnosing mission-critical system failures, identifying root causes, and institutionalizing preventive measures

Strong communication and leadership skills to align stakeholders and drive complex technical decisions across organizations

Preferred Qualifications

Hands-on experience designing, building, and deploying highly-available distributed multi-tier services at global scale (multi-region, multi-datacenter)

Experience with cloud computing on AWS at scale — cost optimiz