Staff Engineer – Backend (E-Commerce Engineering)

Company Introduction :

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.

We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.

Role Overview :

We are looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to lead the evolution of our real-time fraud detection platform. This platform safeguards millions of daily transactions across orders, payments, sellers, and returns using a sophisticated, event-driven architecture powered by streaming data and machine learning.

As a Staff Engineer, you will operate at a group-level scope, driving technical strategy, leading architecture decisions, and influencing cross-functional teams across engineering, product, and data science.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Own the fraud detection domain end-to-end, covering both technical systems and business impact
• Deep dive into platform architecture and drive critical reliability improvements, including circuit breakers, dead-letter queue (DLQ) strategies, and robust failure handling mechanisms
• Build and drive strong cross-functional alignment across engineering, product, and partner teams
• Define, lead, and deliver group-level OKRs with measurable impact
• Lead architecture design and review (AR) processes from proposal and alignment through to execution
• Develop and execute multi-quarter technical roadmaps, including platform extensibility, legacy modernization, and ML-readiness with model integration
• Identify systemic bottlenecks and drive org-wide initiatives to resolve them
• Act as a bar raiser for engineering excellence by leading design reviews, mentoring senior engineers, and elevating engineering standards and best practices

Qualifications: 

• 10-13 years of backend engineering experience with Java and Spring Boot
• Strong experience building and scaling large-scale distributed systems
• Hands-on expertise with Kafka, stream processing frameworks (Apache Flink or Kafka Streams), and Cassandra or similar NoSQL systems
• Proven track record of defining technical strategy and roadmaps, leading architecture reviews (AR), and delivering on group-level OKRs
• Demonstrated ability to identify and solve systemic engineering challenges and drive alignment across cross-functional stakeholders
• Strong leadership in design reviews, mentoring senior engineers, and raising engineering quality standards.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience in fraud detection, trust & safety, or abuse prevention systems.
• Exposure to ML pipelines and real-time decision systems.
• Familiarity with graph databases (Neo4j), rule engines (Drools/MVEL), and data privacy/PII compliance systems.

Type of work model

• Hybrid / Onsite / Remote working

Our Hybrid work model: Coupang hybrid work model is designed to enable a culture of collaboration that acts a catalyst to enrich the experience of employees. Employees are required to work at least 3 days in the office per week, with the flexibility to work from home 2 days a week, depending on the role requirement. Some businesses may require more time in office due to nature of work.

Details to consider

• Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.

Privacy Notice 

• Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below. https://privacy.coupang.com/en/land/jobs/