Senior Software Backend Engineer

Overview

At eBay, we're more than a global ecommerce leader — we’re changing the way the world shops and sells. Our platform empowers millions of buyers and sellers in more than 190 markets around the world. We’re committed to pushing boundaries and leaving our mark as we reinvent the future of ecommerce for enthusiasts.

Our customers are our compass, authenticity thrives, bold ideas are welcome, and everyone can bring their unique selves to work — every day. We're in this together, sustaining the future of our customers, our company, and our planet.

Join a team of passionate thinkers, innovators, and dreamers — and help us connect people and build communities to create economic opportunity for all.

As a Senior Backend Engineer at eBay, you are responsible for driving the design, development, and operation of backend services that power business-critical products and features. This position requires advanced skills in Java or Kotlin (with strong NodeJS proficiency preferred), as well as deep experience in object-oriented programming (OOP), multithreading, data modeling, and rigorous adherence to SOLID design principles. Engineers at this level set technical standards for their team, lead delivery for large functional areas, and influence the broader engineering organization with their expertise, ownership, and mentorship.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and launch of key backend features and subsystems, operating with minimal supervision and high autonomy.
• Drive technical standards and best practices by writing exemplary code and documentation, and advocating for engineering excellence in areas such as security, scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Own an entire functional area, mapping complex business problems to robust production solutions.
• Express technical risks, trade-offs, and influence design and product decisions at the team and cross-team levels.
• Ensure ramp-up, observability, and operational readiness in production environments; proactively identify system-wide issues and drive resolution.
• Lead code reviews, technical discussions, and mentorship, helping less experienced engineers grow and succeed.
• Design and implement APIs, data models, and end-to-end testing approaches with a quality-first mindset.
• Collaborate deeply with Product, Design, and partner engineering teams to refine requirements, drive alignment, and deliver features that measurably impact business outcomes.
• Take ownership of incident response and production support for your functional domains, rapidly triaging and resolving technical issues.
• Contribute to architecture evolution, refactoring initiatives, and improvements to deployment, CI/CD, and developer productivity.
  
  
  

• Advanced proficiency in Java or Kotlin; strong NodeJS implementation experience highly preferred.
• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience, including leadership in feature areas or subsystems.
• Demonstrated mastery of SOLID principles, OOP, multithreading, and data modeling.
• Deep experience with system design, architectural decision-making, and trade-off analysis.
• Proven track record of technical ownership (entire features/domains), quality delivery, and operational excellence.
• Ability to scope and split large project deliverables into actionable tasks for self and others.
• Maintains high standards in unit test coverage, CI/CD best practices, code reviews, and documentation.
• Strong debugging, risk identification, and cross-team communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent degree.
  
  
  

• Hands-on experience with databases such as MongoDB, PostgreSQL, or Elasticsearch.
• Comfortable with AWS, infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi, Terraform), feature flag systems, and other modern DevOps practices.
• Experience in service and API observability, incident response, and monitoring techniques.
  
  
  

Competencies

• Technical Leadership: Sets and maintains high standards. Acts as a role model in coding, testing, and documentation.
• Ownership & Accountability: Takes charge of large functional domains, resolves technical issues, and ensures robust, timely delivery.
• Business & Product Impact: Understands business goals and delivers solutions that measurably advance product strategy.
• Collaboration & Influence: Works cross-functionally to achieve consensus, drive velocity, and improve engineering practices.
• Mentorship: Contributes actively to team growth, onboarding, and skill development.
• Continuous Improvement: Champions refactoring, tech debt reduction, and process advancements within and across teams.
  
  
  

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eBay is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, and disability, or other legally protected status. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact us at talent@ebay.com. We will make every effort to respond to your request for accommodation as soon as possible. View our accessibility statement to learn more about eBay's commitment to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities.

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