{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"367489786c26ebcfd084d0b4","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/367489786c26ebcfd084d0b4","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/367489786c26ebcfd084d0b4","title":"Sr Software Engineer","description":"Forward is scaling fast, and we need senior engineers who can grow with the platform — not just build features, but harden, secure, and extend the system. This role is a core contributor on our engineering team. You'll ship full-stack product work, build agentic AI systems that automate complex workflows, and own meaningful parts of the platform as we scale it from where it is today to where it needs to be.\r\nYou will work cross-functionally with product, design, and engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into well-scoped technical solutions. We need someone who sees the gaps, fills them, and doesn't wait to be asked.\r\nKey ResponsibilitiesArchitect, build, and maintain full-stack applications using TypeScript, Next.js, React, and Node.js across our product surface area.\r\nOwn end-to-end feature delivery from database schema and API design through frontend UI/UX, including observability, testing, and deployment.\r\nDrive architectural decisions across the stack, balancing speed with long-term durability.\r\nAgentic AI & LLM IntegrationDesign and implement agentic AI systems — autonomous agents that plan multi-step workflows, use tools, call APIs, and make decisions with minimal human oversight.\r\nLead the integration of LLM-powered capabilities into production systems — prompt engineering, tool-use frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and multi-agent orchestration.\r\nStand up and evolve AI platform infrastructure as the roadmap matures — model serving, orchestration, and evaluation pipelines.\r\nStreaming & Real-Time DataBuild and operate real-time streaming data pipelines using Kafka (or Kafka-compatible platforms like WarpStream), stream processors, and event-driven architectures.\r\nDesign event-driven data flows that feed both product and AI systems with low-latency data.\r\nTune Kafka performance, partitioning strategies, and consumer groups for throughput and reliability.\r\nContribute to scaling the platform from current load to the next order of magnitude — capacity planning, performance tuning, and resilience engineering.\r\nBuild and harden security-critical paths: authentication, authorization, secrets management, encryption, and data isolation.\r\nImprove operational maturity — observability, alerting, incident response, and on-call practices that keep a payments platform reliable.\r\nHelp advance compliance posture (PCI DSS, SOC 2) by building the controls, audit trails, and tooling regulated environments require.\r\nWho Thrives HereYou've been the person holding things together at a growing company and you liked it\r\nYou're energized by ambiguity, not paralyzed by it\r\nYou care about doing things right but know when good enough is the move\r\nYou default to shipping, documenting, and iterating\r\nRequired Qualifications7+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping production systems at scale.\r\nTrack record of leading small engineering teams while staying hands-on — you're a player-coach, not a meeting machine.\r\nDemonstrated experience building agentic AI systems — autonomous agents, multi-step tool-use workflows, LLM orchestration, or AI-driven automation pipelines.\r\nSolid understanding of relational databases (PostgreSQL), NoSQL (DynamoDB), and data modeling for high-throughput transactional systems.\r\nExperience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) — EKS/Kubernetes, Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CDK).\r\nExperience building systems from scratch — not just maintaining what exists.\r\nStrong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with engineering, product, and business teams.\r\nPreferred QualificationsExperience in fintech, payments, or regulated industries (PCI DSS, SOC 2).\r\nStrong production experience with Next.js (App Router, Server Components, API routes, middleware, ISR/SSR strategies).\r\nHands-on experience with Apache Kafka or Kafka-compatible streaming platforms (producers, consumers, exactly-once semantics, schema registries, stream processing).\r\nFamiliarity with modern AI/ML tooling — LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, vector databases, embedding pipelines.\r\nBackground with data infrastructure components like Apache Iceberg, StarRocks, ClickHouse, or RisingWave.\r\nStreaming infrastructure and lakehouse architectures (Kafka, Flink, Iceberg).\r\nService mesh with GitOps-driven rollouts (Argo/Flux) — canary deployments, traffic shaping.\r\nContributions to open-source projects or technical blog posts demonstrating thought leadership.\r\nExperience with observability stacks (Datadog, Sentry, Prometheus/Grafana) and SRE practices.\r\nWhat We OfferCompetitive salary and equity package.\r\nFlexible work arrangements and generous PTO.\r\nThe opportunity to shape both the AI roadmap and the platform that powers it.\r\nLocationAustin, TX#J-18808-Ljbffr","company":"Forward","rawCompany":"forward","city":"Brooklyn","state":"NY","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-10-10T01:37:15.513Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"},{"code":"15-1254.00","title":"Web Developers","slug":"web-developers"}],"industries":[{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Sr Software Engineer","description":"Forward is scaling fast, and we need senior engineers who can grow with the platform — not just build features, but harden, secure, and extend the system. This role is a core contributor on our engineering team. You'll ship full-stack product work, build agentic AI systems that automate complex workflows, and own meaningful parts of the platform as we scale it from where it is today to where it needs to be.\r\nYou will work cross-functionally with product, design, and engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business problems into well-scoped technical solutions. We need someone who sees the gaps, fills them, and doesn't wait to be asked.\r\nKey ResponsibilitiesArchitect, build, and maintain full-stack applications using TypeScript, Next.js, React, and Node.js across our product surface area.\r\nOwn end-to-end feature delivery from database schema and API design through frontend UI/UX, including observability, testing, and deployment.\r\nDrive architectural decisions across the stack, balancing speed with long-term durability.\r\nAgentic AI & LLM IntegrationDesign and implement agentic AI systems — autonomous agents that plan multi-step workflows, use tools, call APIs, and make decisions with minimal human oversight.\r\nLead the integration of LLM-powered capabilities into production systems — prompt engineering, tool-use frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and multi-agent orchestration.\r\nStand up and evolve AI platform infrastructure as the roadmap matures — model serving, orchestration, and evaluation pipelines.\r\nStreaming & Real-Time DataBuild and operate real-time streaming data pipelines using Kafka (or Kafka-compatible platforms like WarpStream), stream processors, and event-driven architectures.\r\nDesign event-driven data flows that feed both product and AI systems with low-latency data.\r\nTune Kafka performance, partitioning strategies, and consumer groups for throughput and reliability.\r\nContribute to scaling the platform from current load to the next order of magnitude — capacity planning, performance tuning, and resilience engineering.\r\nBuild and harden security-critical paths: authentication, authorization, secrets management, encryption, and data isolation.\r\nImprove operational maturity — observability, alerting, incident response, and on-call practices that keep a payments platform reliable.\r\nHelp advance compliance posture (PCI DSS, SOC 2) by building the controls, audit trails, and tooling regulated environments require.\r\nWho Thrives HereYou've been the person holding things together at a growing company and you liked it\r\nYou're energized by ambiguity, not paralyzed by it\r\nYou care about doing things right but know when good enough is the move\r\nYou default to shipping, documenting, and iterating\r\nRequired Qualifications7+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping production systems at scale.\r\nTrack record of leading small engineering teams while staying hands-on — you're a player-coach, not a meeting machine.\r\nDemonstrated experience building agentic AI systems — autonomous agents, multi-step tool-use workflows, LLM orchestration, or AI-driven automation pipelines.\r\nSolid understanding of relational databases (PostgreSQL), NoSQL (DynamoDB), and data modeling for high-throughput transactional systems.\r\nExperience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) — EKS/Kubernetes, Lambda, API Gateway, IAM, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CDK).\r\nExperience building systems from scratch — not just maintaining what exists.\r\nStrong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with engineering, product, and business teams.\r\nPreferred QualificationsExperience in fintech, payments, or regulated industries (PCI DSS, SOC 2).\r\nStrong production experience with Next.js (App Router, Server Components, API routes, middleware, ISR/SSR strategies).\r\nHands-on experience with Apache Kafka or Kafka-compatible streaming platforms (producers, consumers, exactly-once semantics, schema registries, stream processing).\r\nFamiliarity with modern AI/ML tooling — LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, vector databases, embedding pipelines.\r\nBackground with data infrastructure components like Apache Iceberg, StarRocks, ClickHouse, or RisingWave.\r\nStreaming infrastructure and lakehouse architectures (Kafka, Flink, Iceberg).\r\nService mesh with GitOps-driven rollouts (Argo/Flux) — canary deployments, traffic shaping.\r\nContributions to open-source projects or technical blog posts demonstrating thought leadership.\r\nExperience with observability stacks (Datadog, Sentry, Prometheus/Grafana) and SRE practices.\r\nWhat We OfferCompetitive salary and equity package.\r\nFlexible work arrangements and generous PTO.\r\nThe opportunity to shape both the AI roadmap and the platform that powers it.\r\nLocationAustin, TX#J-18808-Ljbffr","datePosted":"2026-10-10T01:37:15.513Z","dateModified":"2026-10-10T01:37:15.513Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Forward","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Brooklyn","addressRegion":"NY","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"367489786c26ebcfd084d0b4"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/367489786c26ebcfd084d0b4"}}