Senior Software Engineer

Workato
San Francisco, CA
On-site

Who this role is best for

Geared toward candidates with strong distributed systems experience and a background in building reliable backend services, comfortable with Python and Kubernetes in a collaborative, product-driven environment in San Francisco.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 5+ years in production backend systems and a focus on reliability and scalability
    — “5+ years shipping and operating production backend systems at scale.”
  • Individuals who have worked with event-driven and real-time systems, such as queues and pub/sub
    — “Hands-on experience with event-driven, streaming, or real-time systems (queues, pub/sub, long-lived connections).”
  • Professionals who have integrated AI tools like LLMs into production systems and understand agentic workflows
    — “Integrate LLMs and agentic harnesses into production systems.”

Things to consider

  • The role requires active participation in shaping features from ideation to iteration
    — “Drive features end-to-end — from ideation and architecture through deployment, observability, and iteration.”
  • Candidates must be able to operate in a fast-growing tech environment with high expectations
    — “Deloitte Tech Fast 500 ranked us as the 17th fastest growing tech company in the Bay Area.”

How to stand out

  • Emphasize experience in building mission-critical systems with high availability and correctness
    — “Build event-driven, horizontally-scalable backend services that process work reliably and correctly even when parts of the system fail.”
  • Showcase your ability to design for partial failure and backpressure in distributed systems
    — “Deep distributed-systems fundamentals: you know how to keep systems correct and available under partial failure, backpressure, and load.”
  • Demonstrate your ability to mentor and write clean, well-tested code as part of your engineering contributions
    — “Raise the engineering bar through clean, well-tested code, thoughtful reviews, and mentorship.”
  • Highlight your experience with Kubernetes and cloud-based service instrumentation
    — “operating services in production on Kubernetes in the cloud — and instrumenting them with metrics, tracing, and dashboards.”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Built horizontally-scalable backend services
  • Integrated LLMs into production systems
  • Designed and deployed features end-to-end
Typical background
5+ years of backend development experienceExperience with Python

Skills & requirements

Required

Distributed SystemsPythonFastapiPostgreSQLEvent-driven SystemsStreaming SystemsKubernetesAPI DesignSoftware ArchitectureClean CodeCode ReviewsMentorship

Preferred

Llm/agenticMCPRAGApisSdksClis

Stack & domain

PythonFastapiPostgreSQLKubernetesLlmsAgentic HarnessesEvent-driven SystemsStreaming SystemsReal-time IntegrationsApisSdksClisProblem-solvingCommunicationTeamworkOwnershipReliability MindsetProduct-mindedAi-nativeExcellent Written CommunicationCloud ComputingAISoftware Development

About the role

Original posting from Workato

About Workato

Workato is the leading Control and Execution Platform for Enterprise AI — the neutral platform enterprises trust to put AI to work across their business. Workato unifies data, applications, and processes into a single platform so AI can reliably orchestrate business processes in production at enterprise scale. Built on more than a decade of running mission-critical processes for over half the Fortune 500 — including Nasdaq, Amazon, Cisco, Vodafone, Atlassian, and Lucid Motors — Workato turns over 14,000 enterprise systems AI needs to act on into one governed execution layer. For more information, visit workato.com.

Why join us?

Ultimately, Workato believes in fostering a flexible, trust-oriented culture that empowers everyone to take full ownership of their roles. We are driven by innovation and looking for team players who want to actively build our company. 

But, we also believe in balancing productivity with self-care. That’s why we offer all of our employees a vibrant and dynamic work environment along with a multitude of benefits they can enjoy inside and outside of their work lives. 

If this sounds right up your alley, please submit an application. We look forward to getting to know you!

Also, feel free to check out why:

Business Insider named us an “enterprise startup to bet your career on”

Forbes’ Cloud 100 recognized us as one of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world

Deloitte Tech Fast 500 ranked us as the 17th fastest growing tech company in the Bay Area, and 96th in North America

Quartz ranked us the #1 best company for remote workers

Responsibilities

We're looking for an exceptional Senior Software Engineer to help build the distributed backend that powers our AI agent platform and the developer-facing products around it — the event-driven services, real-time integrations, and APIs that let agents reliably do real work. You'll be building the systems that need to stay correct and available on our path to 1M users over the next year. In this role, you will also be responsible to:

Build event-driven, horizontally-scalable backend services that process work reliably and correctly even when parts of the system fail.

Build real-time surfaces and integrations — streaming connections, gateways, and CLIs — that hold up under load.

Integrate LLMs and agentic harnesses into production systems.

Drive features end-to-end — from ideation and architecture through deployment, observability, and iteration.

Raise the engineering bar through clean, well-tested code, thoughtful reviews, and mentorship.

Requirements

Qualifications / Experience / Technical Skills

5+ years shipping and operating production backend systems at scale.

Strong proficiency in Python, and the judgment to write clean, well-tested, maintainable code under it.

Deep distributed-systems fundamentals: you know how to keep systems correct and available under partial failure, backpressure, and load — and you design for it by default.

Hands-on experience with event-driven, streaming, or real-time systems (queues, pub/sub, long-lived connections).

Comfortable operating services in production on Kubernetes in the cloud — and instrumenting them with metrics, tracing, and dashboards so you can debug what you ship.

Solid API and software-architecture instincts; you make and defend sensible trade-offs in ambiguity.

LLM/agentic and developer-facing product experience (MCP, RAG, APIs, SDKs, CLIs) a strong plus.

Our stack: Python, FastAPI, Postgres, Kubernetes, AWS. You don't need prior experience with all of it — we care that you can pick it up fast.

Soft Skills / Personal Characteristics

High agency and ownership: You drive work end-to-end, from ambiguity to shipped and iterated, without waiting to be told.

A reliability mindset: You design for failure, not just the happy path.

Product-minded:  You care about the users using what you build, not just the system behind it.

AI-native: You use modern AI tooling (e.g., Claude Code) in your daily workflow and stay at the cutting edge of what it can do.

Excellent written communication: We work async and write things down.

(REQ ID: 3006)

Source: Workato careers

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