Top Software Engineer Jobs in Santa Cruz, CA

Work directly with the founder to design and build core product features: integrations that pull license data, automation to file renewals/applications, data cleaning with AI, dashboard and alerting UX, and establish engineering practices for testing, deployments, and security. Term contractor role with potential conversion to full-time based on performance.

Develop and operate high-scale backend APIs and microservices for rich messaging channels using Java and Go. Responsibilities include building message routing and delivery pipelines, deploying cloud systems, integrating AI-assisted development tools, supporting on-call operations, and maintaining reliability, low latency, and fault tolerance. The role requires collaboration across distributed teams and may involve occasional travel.

Build, test, review, deploy, monitor, debug, and maintain full-stack software used in K-12 classrooms. Work primarily with React, TypeScript, Node.js, and AWS while improving complex codebases and service design. Participate in incident response, refactoring, code reviews, pairing, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration with product, design, and education experts. Use AI tools thoughtfully and prioritize reliable, accessible, and equitable learning experiences.

Build Tailscale’s internal AI-enablement tools, workflows, guardrails, and documentation. Partner with engineering leadership and teams to define the AI roadmap, evaluate coding agents and models, improve adoption, and measure effects on velocity and quality. The role involves developing internal developer-facing automation, teaching and influencing engineers, identifying high-leverage AI opportunities, and promoting safe use of AI-generated code in a distributed engineering organization.

Develop and maintain control-plane services for Akamai’s AI inference cloud, including APIs, configuration management, platform workflows, and customer-facing resource management features. Write tested and documented code, participate in reviews, collaborate with engineering and product teams, and support platform reliability through monitoring, debugging, and operational assistance.

Lead end-to-end development of reliable care-agent tooling and software services integrating contact-center platforms with backend systems. Own architecture, performance, security, production operations, and technical direction while partnering with product, care operations, QA, and engineering teams. Translate operational workflows into scalable solutions, mentor engineers, and improve tools using agent feedback, operational metrics, and AI-assisted development practices.

Build and scale backend systems, APIs, infrastructure, and applications for multimodal sensing and AI intelligence platforms. Responsibilities include processing sensor, audio, video, and environmental data; supporting data pipelines and model inference; ensuring reliability, scalability, and data integrity; and contributing to engineering standards and long-term technical strategy.

Lead technical vision and strategy for Affirm’s Cards backend engineering organization. Architect scalable and reliable platforms, guide cross-team initiatives, champion AI adoption and engineering excellence, influence technical roadmaps, and mentor engineers through Staff level. The role requires strong architectural expertise, organizational leadership, project management, communication, and cross-functional collaboration.

Develop and debug production-grade full-stack applications across front-end and back-end systems. Build features, APIs, databases, and data models; troubleshoot end-to-end issues; analyze unfamiliar codebases; translate implementations across programming languages; and review AI-generated and developer-written code for correctness, security, scalability, performance, and maintainability.

Develop and evaluate coding tasks for AI systems, including bug fixes, feature development, refactoring, optimization, reproducible environments, reference solutions, automated testing, and deterministic evaluation. The role also involves debugging complex codebases, reviewing contributions, documenting technical decisions, and refining evaluation criteria. Candidates should have strong software engineering fundamentals, backend or API development experience, open-source contributions, and proficiency in at least one listed programming language.

Lead technical execution and architecture for the Loyalty product. Own roadmap, design distributed services and APIs, ensure reliability/observability, integrate with ZMP and AthenaOS, build and coach engineering teams, and drive cross-team delivery of scalable multi-tenant loyalty capabilities.

Own and deliver backend lakehouse infrastructure goals, lead engineers through complex problems, and build highly available distributed data systems. Collaborate with product, design, analytics, and engineering stakeholders; define scalable technical solutions; improve code quality and engineering standards; monitor operational health; support on-call responsibilities; and mentor team members.

Build and maintain secure, scalable APIs and infrastructure for an AI-powered fintech platform. Develop features across the stack, integrate third-party APIs, deploy infrastructure with Terraform, apply compliance and security practices, and support customers as a technical point of contact. The role involves close collaboration with the CTO in a greenfield, early-stage startup environment.

Design and scale foundational APIs and backend services for LogicGate’s multi-tenant GRC platform. Build distributed systems using Java/Kotlin, Spring Boot, AWS, databases, caching, and messaging technologies. Improve reliability, observability, performance, testing, and CI/CD practices. Lead technical design reviews, collaborate cross-functionally, mentor engineers, and use AI coding tools to improve development efficiency.

Set technical direction for Toast’s Developer Experience platform, including local development, build tooling, shared libraries, testing frameworks, and developer portals. The role combines hands-on software engineering with architecture, cross-team technical leadership, AI-assisted development, developer productivity measurement, mentorship, and roadmap prioritization.

Senior .NET Software Engineer responsible for end-to-end software development using Microsoft technologies. Requires extensive experience in SDLC, design principles, technical documentation, web application development with .NET, Agile/SCRUM, Entity Framework, database design, and version control. Familiarity with project tools JIRA, TEMPO, Bitbucket, and Confluence preferred.

Design, build, scale, and operate high-volume payment APIs and distributed systems serving global traffic. Lead complex engineering projects from requirements through production, improve reliability, performance, observability, fault tolerance, and security, and participate in on-call and incident response. Collaborate across product and engineering teams, use AI-assisted development tools responsibly, and mentor engineers through technical reviews and documentation.

Unpaid software engineering internship focusing on full-stack web development with TypeScript, Next.js/React and Node/Express. Work on front- and back-end features, responsive UI with Tailwind, animations with Framer Motion, PostgreSQL and MongoDB integration, REST APIs, microservice-based architecture, code reviews, debugging, and product planning in a remote-first startup.

Design, build, scale, and operate high-volume payment APIs and distributed systems serving global traffic. Lead complex engineering projects from requirements through production, improve performance, observability, reliability, fault tolerance, and security, and participate in on-call incident response. Collaborate across product and engineering teams, use AI-assisted development tools responsibly, and mentor engineers through technical reviews, documentation, and guidance.

Join as a full-stack software engineer to design, develop, and maintain web applications and services. Collaborate cross-functionally, write clean code, perform code reviews, debug issues, and stay current with industry trends.

Develop and operate CrowdStrike’s internal cloud management platform and mission-critical CI/CD pipelines. Build APIs and UIs using Go and TypeScript, improve developer productivity, integrate tooling, maintain cloud-native infrastructure, and support secure, highly available software delivery systems. Collaborate with development, infrastructure, security, and SRE teams, ensure SOC2-aware processes, and participate in on-call operations.

Develop scalable Java-based distributed systems for BILL’s Growth team, focusing on customer acquisition, activation, onboarding, and product expansion. Build high-performance SaaS applications using AWS services, SQL and NoSQL databases, Gradle, and CI/CD pipelines. Collaborate with feature teams and product managers while applying generative AI and LLM technologies to accelerate engineering workflows.

Develop firmware, backend systems, and tooling for cellular IoT devices. Responsibilities include C development for STM32 microcontrollers, embedded AI integration, cellular communication, low-power optimization, device debugging and validation, and backend development with Python and Ruby on Rails. The role collaborates with hardware, electronics, and manufacturing teams and requires independently leading complex development initiatives.

Build and ship end-to-end product features across an author analytics dashboard, marketing site, free tools, billing, email, and AI-assisted functionality. Design data models and APIs, integrate third-party services, develop production LLM features, and maintain testing, monitoring, performance, and observability. The role includes code review, technical documentation, independent product decisions, and close collaboration with the founder in a remote-first environment.

Develop and maintain a TypeScript and Node.js application in a federal AWS environment. Responsibilities include troubleshooting defects across frontend, APIs, databases, integrations, containers, and cloud services; performing root-cause analysis; deploying secure fixes; supporting releases and incidents; and collaborating with Test Engineers. The role also tunes and evaluates AI models, prompts, workflows, retrieval settings, and integrations while maintaining security, traceability, governance, and change control.