Staff Software Engineer Backend

Company Overview

Job Overview

Come join Intuit as a Staff Software Engineer, Backend on the QuickBooks Online Payroll team. This team is on a mission to build a great payroll product that caters to a wide range of customers, from small businesses to mid-market companies across the globe.

As a Staff Engineer, you will be responsible for defining and driving the technical architecture and strategy for our core backend payroll systems. You will serve as a key technical leader within and across multiple teams, solving the most complex scaling, durability, and performance challenges.

You will join an innovative and passionate team of world-class engineers using cutting-edge technologies like Java, Spring Boot, React, Kubernetes, AWS, Elastic Search, Kafka, and leveraging AI/ML services.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term technical architecture and strategy for core backend services and cross-team initiatives, ensuring scalability, performance, and operational excellence.

• Lead the technical evaluation and architectural integration of Generative AI models and machine learning services, defining the standards for responsible and scalable application across the platform.

• Serve as the primary technical authority and domain expert, solving the most complex, ambiguous, and high-impact engineering problems across organizational boundaries.

• Mentor and coach Senior and Principal engineers, establishing engineering excellence standards and best practices across multiple teams.

• Contribute to the strategic direction, systems roadmap, and operational processes by providing deep technical guidance and foresight.

• Roughly 50-70% hands-on coding to implement foundational architectural components, complex core features, and proofs of concept.

• Drive cross-organizational alignment on technical solutions, API standards, and shared infrastructure best practices.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify, implement, and integrate large-scale AI solutions into core business workflows.

• Maintain end-to-end ownership throughout the engineering lifecycle, focusing on systematic improvements to development, testing, deployment, and operational reliability.

• Adhere to Agile Development, SCRUM, or Extreme Programming methodologies while influencing process improvements for large teams.

• Embody a "Speed as a Habit" mindset, operating in a fast-moving environment and executing fiercely to deliver outcomes.

• Demonstrate a "Customer Obsession," translating complex technical needs into measurable customer value.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 8+ years of experience in software development, with at least 3+ years operating in a Lead or Senior/Staff capacity.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience.

• Expert-level mastery of distributed systems architecture, performance optimization, and operational durability.

• Deep proficiency in programming languages such as Java and JavaScript, with strong Object-Oriented Programming concepts.

• Expert experience in backend programming with Java, Java EE, REST services, and the Spring framework, especially Spring Boot, and Hibernate.

• Strong experience with one of the leading JavaScript frameworks.

• Proven experience with cloud platforms (AWS or Google Cloud) and container orchestration using Kubernetes.

• Demonstrable expertise in AI/ML concepts, including model deployment, MLOps, and the strategic application of Generative AI in enterprise software.

• Demonstrated track record of designing, building, and operating highly available, globally distributed, enterprise-scale backend systems.

• Exceptional problem-solving, communication (including communicating architectural decisions to executives), and metrics-driven decision-making skills.

• Experience with Collaborative Software Development using Github and advanced CI/CD pipelines.

• Experience with Performance Testing frameworks is an added advantage.

Intuit provides a competitive compensation package with a strong pay for performance rewards approach. This position will be eligible for a cash bonus, equity rewards and benefits, in accordance with our applicable plans and programs (see more about our compensation and benefits at Intuit®: Careers | Benefits). Pay offered is based on factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and work location. To drive ongoing fair pay for employees, Intuit conducts regular comparisons across categories of ethnicity and gender. The expected base pay range for this position is: