Senior Software Engineer II AI-Native, backend Growth

About the role

Life360 is seeking a senior backend engineer who thinks natively with AI tools. You will play a crucial role in shaping how the Growth team develops products and services, and how AI is integrated into future development processes. This position is central to building and evolving our AI-native engineering workflows.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Design and construct robust APIs and services supporting our subscriber base and payment systems, focusing on secure, user-friendly, and valuable experiences.
• Integrate AI, specifically Claude Code, as a primary development partner to manage specifications, generate code and tests, validate outcomes, and conduct reviews.
• Help establish and document AI-native engineering methodologies for the Growth team, creating frameworks for wider organizational adoption.
• Contribute to full-stack development as needed, delivering polished, efficient, and dependable features to millions of users.
• Collaborate with product managers and designers to translate complex user needs into sophisticated, scalable engineering solutions.
• Participate in architectural discussions, code reviews, and foster a culture of quality and ongoing improvement.
• Engage in on-call duties and incident response.
• Employ agentic workflows to significantly enhance delivery speed and quality of results.
• Mentor team members, contribute to team processes, technical standards, and advance the team's AI-native engineering practices.
• Ensure performance, reliability, and accessibility for all owned features.

Requirements

• A minimum of 6 years of experience in backend software engineering.
• Proficiency in Java and Spring Boot.
• Experience with distributed streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka.
• A strong grasp of distributed systems principles, including consistency, fault tolerance, replication, and data durability.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, with a preference for AWS, and containerized deployments.
• Extensive experience with agentic workflows, understanding the research-plan-implement cycle without relying on agents for core thinking.
• Possession of a Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• A growth mindset, with the ability to precisely structure problems, learn rapidly, show interest beyond immediate responsibilities, and embrace new challenges.
• A collaborative approach, characterized by clear communication, effective cross-team work, and appreciation for diverse viewpoints.
• An ownership mentality, taking full responsibility for work from conception through production and beyond.
• An AI-native working style, utilizing AI tools like Claude Code as a development collaborator by delegating tasks, critically evaluating outputs, and managing parallel workstreams.
• Thoughtful communication skills, capable of explaining technical trade-offs and articulating ideas clearly.

Nice to have

• Experience with stream processing frameworks such as Kafka Streams or Flink.
• Familiarity with schema registries and strategies for schema evolution.
• Knowledge of Confluent Platform or Confluent Cloud.
• Understanding of CI/CD patterns, GitHub Actions, and artifact management tools like Maven or Nexus.
• Experience with observability tools including Prometheus, Grafana, or DataDog.
• Previous work on ecosystem or integration tooling.

Skills & tools

• Java
• Spring Boot
• Apache Kafka
• AWS
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Claude Code (or equivalent AI coding assistants)

Practical notes

• For candidates in the US, the salary range is $148,000 to $216,000 USD.
• For candidates in Canada, the salary range is 171,500 to 201,000 CAD.
• Note: In Canada, the job title will be "Developer" instead of "Engineer."
• Compensation is determined by factors including geographic location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
• The compensation package includes medical, dental, vision, financial, and other benefits, plus equity.
• Life360 offers a comprehensive benefits package, including 100% paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for US employees, and supplemental plans for Canadian employees.
• Retirement plans include 401(k) with company match in the US and RRSP with DPSP in Canada.
• An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is available for mental wellness.
• Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) and 12 company-wide holidays are provided.
• Support for remote work includes equipment, tools, and reimbursement.
• A free Life360 Platinum Membership is offered.
• Life360 is a remote-first company. All positions can be performed remotely within the US and Canada.
• AI tool usage during interviews will vary by role. Guidance will be provided by the Recruiter. Undisclosed AI use may affect candidacy.