Staff Software Engineer - Backend

SurveyMonkey is the world’s most popular platform for surveys and forms, built for business—loved by users. We combine powerful capabilities with intuitive design, effectively serving every use case, from customer experience to employee engagement, market research to payment and registration forms. With built-in research expertise and AI-powered technology, it’s like having a team of expert researchers at your fingertips. Trusted by millions—from startups to Fortune 500 companies—SurveyMonkey helps teams gather insights and information that inspire better decisions, create experiences people love, and drive business growth. Discover how at surveymonkey.com http://surveymonkey.com. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer with a proven track record of solving complex technical challenges and scaling existing solutions while adhering to strong software engineering practices. You’ll bring deep technical expertise and fresh perspectives to help evolve our platform, both internally and for our customers. In this role, you’ll provide technical leadership and domain ownership across critical backend services, influencing architectural decisions and helping shape the engineering direction of multiple initiatives. You’ll also play an important role in driving engineering excellence, mentoring other engineers, and identifying opportunities to improve how we build and scale software. WHAT YOU’LL BE WORKING ON - Architect, build, and maintain scalable backend services across multiple data regions, ensuring reliability, performance, and long-term maintainability. - Provide technical domain ownership for a suite of services supporting one or more SurveyMonkey subsystems, driving architectural direction and technical decisions. - Own technical requirements and feature delivery end-to-end, including authoring, reviewing, and approving requirements and technical specifications across multiple concurrent projects. - Develop high-quality, readable, and extensible backend code while establishing and promoting software engineering best practices that enable teams to move quickly. - Identify and implement effective processes, measurement solutions, and external technologies within the engineering function, developing recommendations and adoption strategies. - Partner with product and technology leaders as a technical planning advisor, evaluating opportunities and making recommendations with return on investment in mind. - Investigate and solve complex algorithmic and optimization challenges, serving as a recognized technical expert and resource across the engineering function. - Foster a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, rigorous code reviews, and testing, while mentoring engineers on effectively leveraging modern AI development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot. Establish standards for reviewing AI-generated code to maintain quality and engineering rigor. WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM PEOPLE WITH - 12+ years of professional experience in SaaS and web application development, primarily focused on backend engineering, including leading large-scale, cross-functional projects. - Deep expertise in architecting and building scalable, high-performance backend services and APIs, with proficiency in frameworks such as FastAPI, Flask, Django, Spring Boot, or Node.js. - Strong understanding of software design patterns, ORM frameworks, and SQL/NoSQL databases. Experience with Elasticsearch is a plus. - Experience designing distributed systems, including asynchronous messaging, event-driven architectures, and distributed streaming technologies. - Experience building and scaling cloud-native applications using AWS. - Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools and workflows (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot), as well as integrating AI models, LLM frameworks, and automated workflows into backend architectures. - Demonstrated technical leadership in driving architectural decisions, influencing engineering strategy, and using data and business impact to guide technical priorities. SurveyMonkey believes in-person collaboration is valuable for building relationships, fostering community, and enhancing our speed and execution in problem-solving and decision-making. As such, this opportunity is hybrid and requires you to work from the SurveyMonkey office in Bengaluru 3 days per week. #LI - Hybrid Why SurveyMonkey? We’re glad you asked At SurveyMonkey, curiosity powers everything we do. We’re a global company where people from all backgrounds can make an impact, build meaningful connections, and grow their careers. Our teams work in a flexible, hybrid environment with thoughtfully designed offices and programs like the CHOICE Fund https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/the-c-h-o-i-c-e-fund-at-surveymonkey/ to help employees thrive in work and life. We’ve been trusted by organizations for over 25 years, and we’re just getting started. Our milestones include celebrating a quarter-century of curiosity with 25 acts of giving https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/25-anniversary-acts-of-giving/, opening new hubs in Costa Rica https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/bringing-global-survey-tools-together-with-pura-vida-surveymonkey-launches-in-costa-rica/ and India https://www.surveymonkey.com/newsroom/expands-global-footprint-new-bengaluru-office/, crossing the threshold of 100 billion questions answered https://www.linkedin.com/posts/surveymonkey_this-week-were-celebrating-a-monumental-activity-7320476713241436160-1njI?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACXxneYBWR2gGWzCKIZny7jMucfLGW7KORE, and earning recognition as one of the Most Inspiring Workplaces across North America https://www.surveymonkey.com/newsroom/surveymonkey-celebrates-inspiring-workplaces-win-in-na-2025/ and Asia https://www.surveymonkey.com/newsroom/surveymonkey-celebrates-inspiring-workplaces-win-in-asia/. We live our company values https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/surveymonkey-company-values-refresh-2025/—like championing inclusion and making it happen—by embedding them into how we hire, collaborate, and grow. They help shape everything from our culture to our business decisions. Come join us and see where your curiosity can take you. Our commitment to an inclusive workplace SurveyMonkey is an equal opportunity employer committed to providing a workplace free from harassment and discrimination. We celebrate the unique differences of our employees because that is what drives curiosity, innovation, and the success of our business. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, pregnancy, parental status, genetic information, political affiliation, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities. Your data For more information on how SurveyMonkey (including its subsidiary and affiliated companies) processes your personal data as a job candidate or applicant, please see our Global Applicant and Candidate Data Privacy Notice https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/candidate-privacy-notice/. Please note that we may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as sourcing candidates, reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or summarizing interviews. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment.