Staff Backend Engineer

What3words
Vietnam
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Candidates with distributed systems experience and technical leadership capabilities will find this senior-level role in Vietnam with a microservices-based architecture and collaborative team structure.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with a background in scalable backend systems and a track record in microservices design
    — “massively scalable, microservices-based architecture, based around Kubernetes on AWS”
  • Individuals who have led technical decisions and raised engineering standards in prior roles
    — “Ability to set technical direction, make pragmatic architecture decisions, and raise engineering standards across teams”
  • Professionals comfortable with Java and Spring, and who can work autonomously on end-to-end features
    — “Excellent Java programming skills, with significant experience in the Spring ecosystem”

Things to consider

  • The role requires in-office presence for up to five days a week, despite flexible work options
    — “you can work from the office five days a week if preferred”
  • The role offers limited global remote work, only up to six weeks a year
    — “six-week remote-work allowance; for up to six weeks a year, you can work from anywhere in the world”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience in end-to-end feature ownership and technical leadership in your resume and interviews
    — “Work autonomously, own features end-to-end, collaborate directly with PMs, QA, and other engineers”
  • Emphasize your hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and AWS in your application materials
    — “Hands-on experience running services with Docker and Kubernetes in AWS or a similar cloud environment”
  • Showcase your ability to improve system reliability and performance through observability and trade-offs
    — “Ability to diagnose production issues, improve observability, and make sound trade-offs around latency, scalability, and availability”
  • Demonstrate your communication skills and product mindset with examples from your career
    — “Excellent communication in spoken and written English, paired with a product mindset and rigorous attention to detail”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

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

What success looks like

  • delivering product roadmap
  • choosing technologies
  • evaluating tradeoffs
  • production issues
Typical background
backend engineeringcloud computingdistributed systems

Skills & requirements

Required

JavaSpringRedisDockerKubernetesMySQLDistributed SystemsMicroservicesCloud PlatformsProduction IssuesObservabilityTechnical Leadership

Preferred

PythonFastapiLLM ApisVoice AI ModelsAgentic AI Workflows

Stack & domain

JavaSpringRedisFastapiDockerMySQLPythonLLM ApisVoice AI ModelsAgentic AI WorkflowsProblem SolvingCollaborationCommunicationProduct MindsetAttention To DetailBackend EngineeringMicroservicesCloud PlatformsAI

About the role

Original posting from What3words via Ashby

Our mission is to become the global standard for addressing. Street addresses weren’t designed for 2026. They aren’t accurate enough to specify building entrances, and they don’t exist for parks, rural areas and many parts of the world. This makes it hard to find places and causes problems and inefficiencies on a global scale.

That’s why we created what3words. We divided the world into 3m squares and gave each square a unique combination of three words. It’s the easiest way to find and share precise locations.

Over the last year, what3words has been used in 193 countries, and our monthly active users continue to grow at an impressive pace. Our tech is used by emergency services, delivery companies, eCommerce businesses, ride-hailing apps and NGOs, and is integrated into the navigation systems of millions of cars around the world.

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer who enjoys solving problems and designing, building and scaling robust services and solutions. You’ll be working to deliver our product roadmap, choosing technologies, evaluating tradeoffs, and seeing your work through all the way to production.

At what3words, we’re proud of our tech stack. We have built a massively scalable, microservices-based architecture, based around Kubernetes on AWS. You’ll work in technologies such as Spring, Redis, FastAPI, Docker, MySQL among many others.

This is a great opportunity to join a collaborative and ambitious team, at one of the most exciting times in this company’s life.

Essential Skills:

  • Java Proficiency: Excellent Java programming skills, with significant experience in the Spring ecosystem.
  • Database Proficiency: Commercial experience working with SQL & DB schema design.
  • Ownership: Work autonomously, own features end-to-end, collaborate directly with PMs, QA, and other engineers.
  • Distributed Systems: Experience designing and evolving microservices, including service boundaries, API contracts, and resilience when dependencies fail.
  • Cloud and Containers: Hands-on experience running services with Docker and Kubernetes in AWS or a similar cloud environment.
  • Reliability and Performance: Ability to diagnose production issues, improve observability, and make sound trade-offs around latency, scalability, and availability.
  • Technical Leadership: Ability to set technical direction, make pragmatic architecture decisions, and raise engineering standards across teams.
  • Soft Skills: Excellent communication in spoken and written English, paired with a product mindset and rigorous attention to detail.

Extra credit if you have:

  • Experience working with Python, FastAPI and LLM APIs.
  • Experience working with Voice AI Models.
  • Experience with Agentic AI workflows for software development.

This role is an excellent growth opportunity for the ideal candidate to develop their experience and career so if you feel you meet most of the requirements and our mission resonates with you, please do apply.

The role is based in our centrally located HCMC office. While you can work from the office five days a week if preferred, our Engineering team can choose to work up to two days a week from home. We also offer a six-week remote-work allowance; for up to six weeks a year, you can work from anywhere in the world (as long as you’ve got great WiFi and are happy to work with your main office timezone).

Diversity & Inclusion

Our mission is to help everyone talk about everywhere, and we believe diverse perspectives make for a better company and better products too. We strongly encourage applications from underrepresented groups and are committed to equality and inclusivity in our hiring processes and company culture.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits to all permanent employees of what3words:

  • Competitive salary
  • Flexible working
  • 6 week remote working (work from anywhere) policy
  • 25 days holiday: plus the option to buy more!
  • Share options
  • Private health insurance
  • Wellbeing Days
  • Generous parental leave policies
  • Family friendly policies
  • Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
  • Lunch & learn sessions
  • Team social budget

Source: What3words careers (Ashby)

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