# Senior Software Engineer, Virality and Activation

**Company:** [Otter](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/otter)
**Location:** Mountain View, CA
**Role:** Fullstack Engineering
**Salary:** $185k – $230k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Python, Go, MySQL, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Elasticsearch, Kafka, AWS, A/B Testing
**Posted:** 2026-07-07

> Senior Software Engineer building scalable backend systems for user activation, growth loops, sharing, onboarding, and A/B experimentation at Otter.ai. Requires 5+ years backend experience, strong Python skills, databases, AWS, and metrics-driven product intuition.

## Job Description

## Your Impact

- Own features end-to-end: from technical design through launch to metric readout, operating with a high degree of autonomy
- Design and build scalable backend systems that power growth loops — sharing flows, invite mechanics, notification pipelines, and onboarding infrastructure
- Lead the instrumentation strategy for new features, ensuring the team has the data it needs to measure impact and iterate with confidence
- Drive A/B experiments: define hypotheses, instrument correctly, analyze results, and translate findings into concrete product decisions
- Raise the team's technical bar through rigorous code reviews, design feedback, and proactive documentation
- Partner with product and data to define what success looks like before building starts — and hold the team accountable to it after launch
- Identify systemic gaps and advocate for improvements that increase the team's velocity and reliability over time

## Requirements

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of backend software engineering experience, with a strong track record of shipping impactful, user-facing features at scale
- Deep proficiency in Python for building and maintaining production systems at scale
- Strong command of relational databases (MySQL or similar) and experience designing schemas and query patterns for high-traffic production workloads
- Production experience with NoSQL and high-performance data stores such as DynamoDB, Cassandra, Redis, or Elasticsearch, with ability to reason about consistency, latency, and scalability trade-offs
- Production experience with Kafka or similar distributed messaging systems, understanding operational trade-offs
- Experience with AWS infrastructure (EC2, S3, DynamoDB, or similar) and reasoning about reliability and cost in a cloud environment
- Hands-on experience with A/B experimentation, including rigorous design and drawing well-grounded conclusions
- Defines success in terms of user outcomes and business metrics
- Operates effectively in ambiguous environments: scopes loosely defined problems, builds alignment, and drives to closure
- Communicates technical decisions clearly to engineering peers and non-technical stakeholders

## Nice-to-Haves

- Experience with Go or another high-performance compiled language

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