Software Development Engineer Backend
HighLevel
Description
About HighLevel:
HighLevel is an AI-powered business operating system that gives agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs the infrastructure to build, automate and scale. Today, HighLevel supports SMBs across 150+ countries, fueling community-driven growth rooted in real customer outcomes.To date, businesses operating on HighLevel have generated over $7 billion in ecosystem value, demonstrating the impact of shared infrastructure at scale. By centralizing conversations, automation and intelligence into one system, we help businesses move faster, reduce complexity and execute efficiently.Behind the platform, HighLevel powers more than 4 billion API hits and 2.5 billion message events daily. With 250 terabytes of distributed data, 250+ microservices and over 1 million domain names supported, our architecture is built for performance, resilience and long-term scalability.
Our peopleWith over 2,000 team members across 10+ countries, HighLevel operates as a global, remote-first organization built for speed and ownership. We value initiative, clarity and execution, creating space for ambitious people to build systems that support millions of businesses worldwide. Here, innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated and people come first, no matter where they call home.
Our impactEvery month, HighLevel enables more than 1.5 billion messages, 200 million leads and 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we support. Behind those numbers are real people building independence, expanding opportunity and creating measurable impact. Weâre proud to be a part of that.Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts
About Role
We are seeking an SDE-3 Backend Builder to own the CRM Opportunities product end-to-end. Opportunities is the deal and pipeline engine at the heart of our CRM â the system of record for every revenue motion our customers run, from lead conversion to closed-won.
This role emphasises deep backend ownership: designing data models, APIs, and distributed workflows that power pipelines, stages, automations, reporting, and integrations at scale. You will operate with high autonomy, turning ambiguous problems into production systems, with enough frontend fluency to ship the occasional UI surface without waiting on anyone.
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Own the full lifecycle of Opportunities backend: translate business and customer needs into scalable, production-grade services
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Design and evolve the data model for pipelines, stages, deals, and associated entities â getting consistency, throughput, and query patterns right
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Build and scale APIs, event-driven workflows, and background jobs that handle high-volume writes, automations, and integrations
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Tackle distributed systems concerns: idempotency, eventual consistency, race conditions, hot tenants, and noisy-neighbor isolation
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Improve performance and reliability of large pipelines (millions of opportunities per workspace) through indexing, sharding, caching, and query optimization
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Ship end-to-end when needed â including UI changes in Vue â without blocking on cross-functional handoffs
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Instrument the system: logs, metrics, traces, and SLOs that make production behavior legible
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Drive incident response, postmortems, and the engineering hygiene that keeps a high-traffic product healthy
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4+ years building and operating production backend systems at scale
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Strong fundamentals in data modeling (SQL and NoSQL), API design, and distributed systems
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Hands-on experience with Node.js or Go in production
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Track record of owning services end-to-end â design, build, deploy, on-call
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Comfort working independently in ambiguous problem spaces with high ownership
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Solid grasp of scalability, performance, and reliability trade-offs
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Experience building CRM, sales, pipeline, or workflow products
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Worked on multi-tenant SaaS at sc
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About HighLevel
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Job Stats
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Interview Prep Guide
Preparation Strategy
To prepare for this role, focus on reviewing distributed systems concepts, data modeling, and API design. Practice solving problems related to scalability, performance, and reliability. Make sure you have a strong understanding of system design principles and microservices architecture. Be prepared to give specific examples of your problem-solving skills and approach to system design. Review your past experiences working on complex systems and be ready to talk about your experience with technologies such as Vue.
Likely Interview Rounds
- 1. Technical~60 min
What to prep: Review distributed systems concepts, data modeling, and API design. Practice solving problems related to scalability, performance, and reliability.
- How would you design a scalable data model for pipelines and stages?
- What strategies would you use to handle high-volume writes and automations in a distributed system?
- How do you ensure idempotency and eventual consistency in a distributed workflow?
- Can you explain how you would optimize query performance for large pipelines?
- 2. System design~90 min
What to prep: Review system design principles, microservices architecture, and data consistency models. Practice designing systems that can handle high traffic and large datasets.
- Design a system to handle millions of opportunities per workspace.
- How would you architect a pipeline engine to support multiple stages and automations?
- Can you describe a system to ensure data consistency and integrity across multiple microservices?
- 3. Behavioral~60 min
What to prep: Review your past experiences working on complex systems and be prepared to give specific examples of your problem-solving skills and approach to system design.
- Tell me about a time when you had to debug a complex issue in a distributed system.
- Can you describe a situation where you had to optimize the performance of a large dataset?
- How do you handle ambiguous problems and turn them into production-ready solutions?
Most Likely Questions
- What do you know about our company and our products?
- How do you stay current with new technologies and trends in software development?
- Can you describe your experience with distributed systems and microservices architecture?
- How do you approach debugging and troubleshooting complex issues?
- Can you walk me through your process for designing and implementing a new feature or system?
Common Pitfalls
- Lack of experience with distributed systems and microservices architecture
- Inability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and concisely
- Insufficient attention to detail and testing
- Failure to consider scalability and performance when designing systems
Free Prep Resources
- • LeetCode
- • System Design Primer (GitHub: donnemartin)
- • Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann