Software Engineer — Backend
TextNow
Software Engineering
Canada
USD 123,900-249k / year + Equity
Posted 6+ months ago
We believe that communication belongs to everyone. TextNow is redefining how people connect by combining simplicity, intelligence, and accessibility. We’re a team of curious builders using technology to make communication more affordable and powerful for millions of users every day.
As a Software Engineer- Backend, you won’t just build services—you’ll shape the systems, architecture, and tooling that make them possible. At TextNow, Members of Technical Staff combine leadership and hands-on coding to enable the highest leverage opportunities possible. Being able to operate strategically, as well as diving into the lowest-level details, is a must. You’ll take technical ownership of key backend domains and work across mobile, web, and data to create faster, smarter, more reliable systems.
AI and automation are at the core of how we build. You’ll use them to accelerate development, improve performance, detect and resolve issues faster, and continuously raise the bar for backend engineering excellence.
We’re hiring Members of Technical Staff across multiple levels(intermediate/senior/staff+). Whether you’re an experienced engineer looking to lead complex systems, or an early-career engineer eager to grow, we’ll align your title and scope based on experience and impact.
This role is about impact at scale. You’ll shape how TextNow builds and operates its backend systems—using AI and automation to make development faster, decisions smarter, and experiences more seamless for millions of users worldwide.
What You'll Do
- Design, develop, and sustain high-performance, scalable backend services using Go microservices and modern cloud-native tooling.
- Lead architectural modernization and modularization to improve scalability, observability, and developer velocity.
- Define and own the entire lifecycle of your systems: API design, data modeling, deployment (CI/CD), live-traffic monitoring, integration and load testing, telemetry & data analysis, experiment design (A/B tests), and continuous iteration.
- Influence and evolve our architecture: propose and lead initiatives to decompose monoliths, migrate legacy code, build shared frameworks and reusable service components; evaluate new backend technologies and lead their adoption.
- Apply AI-driven tools and automation frameworks to speed up development, code analysis, testing, and reliability.
- Leverage intelligent telemetry, analytics, and optimization pipelines to improve service performance and resilience.
- Define observability standards, telemetry pipelines, and fault-tolerance strategies for production-grade distributed systems.
- Partner closely with product, mobile, and data teams to deliver seamless, high-quality experiences across all platforms.
- Drive technical discussions, mentor engineers, and influence strategic direction across backend and infrastructure domains.
Who You Are
- A technical leader with the ability to create and lead roadmaps/initiatives that align to high-level business objectives.
- Deep expertise in Go, with additional experience in PHP for legacy systems is a bonus
- Proven track record of architecting modular, maintainable, and high-performance microservices.
- Strong background in system design, observability, and performance optimization.
- Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, Argo CD, Protobuf, CI/CD pipelines, and auto-scaling architectures.
- Experience using AI and automation to improve developer velocity, reliability, or system intelligence.
- A collaborative technical leader who thrives in fast-moving environments and mentors others to excel.
- Passionate about building resilient, intelligent, and highly scalable backend systems that serve millions of users.
- You architect for observability, reliability, and production-readiness: you understand instrumentation, SLOs/SLIs, fault-tolerance, runbooks, incident triage, scalable telemetry pipelines, and production diagnostics for backend systems.
- You have been a technical leader (not just an individual contributor): you’ve influenced roadmap decisions, contributed to multi-team initiatives, mentored/led engineers, driven culture/process improvements, and interfaced with senior engineering/product leadership.
More about TextNow...
Our Values:
· Customer Obsessed (We strive to have a deep understanding of our customers)
· Do Right By Our People (We treat each other with fairness, respect, and integrity)
· Accept the Challenge (We adopt a "Yes, We Can" mindset to achieve ambitious goals)
· Act Like an Owner (We treat this company like it's our own... because it is!)
· Give a Damn! (We are deeply commited and passionate about our work and achieving results)
Benefits, Culture, & More:
· Strong work life blend
· Flexible work arrangements (wfh, remote, or access to one of our office spaces)
· Employee Stock Options
· Unlimited vacation
· Competitive pay and benefits
· Parental leave
· Benefits for both physical and mental well being (wellness credit and L&D credit)
· We travel a few times a year for various team events, company wide off-sites, and more
Dogfooding & Customer Obsession:
At TextNow, every employee gets to actively use our app for calling and texting. Dogfooding helps us experience what customers do, to spot issues early, and drive better design, engineering, and user experiences.
Diversity and Inclusion:
At TextNow, our mission is built around inclusion and offering a service for EVERYONE, in an industry that traditionally only caters to the few who have the means to afford it. We believe that diversity of thought and inclusion of others promotes a greater feeling of belonging and higher levels of engagement. We know that if we work together, we can do amazing things, and that our differences are what make our product and company great.
TextNow Candidate Policy
By submitting an application to TextNow, you agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with the TextNow Candidate Policy
Base Salary Range
CAD Salary Range: 113,400 - 248,000
USD Salary Range: 123,900 - 249,000
NYC, CT, NJ, Seattle, LA, San Diego USD Salary Range: 136,300-273,900
San Francisco / Bay Area USD Salary Range: 148,700 -298,800
Our total rewards package goes beyond base salary. We offer a comprehensive benefits program, an annual performance-based bonus, and equity opportunities that ensure you share in the success you help create.
We know that exceptional talent doesn’t always fit neatly into a range, so if you’re passionate about our mission and think you can make a difference, we encourage you to apply, even if your compensation expectations are outside the listed range. Final compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors, including your skills, experience, and location.
Our goal is to offer a competitive package that reflects the impact and expertise you bring to the team.