Staff Software Engineer, Shopper Data Platform

Attentive is hiring a Staff Software Engineer, Shopper Data Platform. It pays $180k-$230k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Attentive.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
Pay on this posting starts 8% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
The posting mentions distributed systems, data engineering and system architecture among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a senior role.
Attentive has 30 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Lead high-scale data systems and user profile architecture powering machine learning and personalization capabilities.

distributed-systemsdata-engineeringsystem-architecturemachine-learning

Attentive® is the AI marketing platform for 1:1 personalization redefining the way brands and people connect. We’re the only marketing platform that combines powerful technology with human expertise to build authentic customer relationships. By unifying SMS, RCS, email, and push notifications, our AI-powered personalization engine delivers bespoke experiences that drive performance, revenue, and loyalty through real-time behavioral insights. Recognized as the #1 provider in SMS Marketing by G2, Attentive partners with more than 8,000 customers across 70+ industries. Leading global brands like Crate and Barrel, Urban Outfitters, and Carter’s work with us to enable billions of interactions that power tens of billions in revenue for our customers. With a distributed global workforce and employee hubs in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Sydney, Attentive’s team has been consistently recognized for its performance and culture. We’re proud to be included in Deloitte’s Fast 500 (four years running!), LinkedIn’s Top Startups, Forbes’ Cloud 100 (five years running!), Inc.’s Best Workplaces, and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index!

About the Role

Our Engineering team creates innovative product experiences that power personalized marketing at massive scale. We develop cutting-edge applications and systems that process hundreds of billions of messages and events per year, enabling marketers to connect effectively with hundreds of millions of consumers.

The User Profile team is the backbone of our data-driven personalization efforts, responsible for ingesting, processing, and serving millions of user data points daily. As a Staff Software Engineer on this team, you will provide technical leadership for the high-scale systems that serve as the single source of truth for user profiles and power core products, advanced segmentation, personalization, and machine learning capabilities.

You will combine deep hands-on engineering with broad technical leadership, owning architecture across critical data systems and partnering across engineering, product, data, and ML teams. You will tackle ambiguous and complex technical problems, establish architectural direction, and drive initiatives spanning multiple systems and teams from strategy through execution.

This is an opportunity to shape foundational infrastructure at the center of our company’s mission to make user data more actionable and valuable while multiplying your impact through the systems, technical direction, and engineers around you.

What You’ll Accomplish

Set technical direction and architecture for high-scale systems and API’s responsible for the ingestion, processing, storage, and serving of user profiles and attributes.
Lead complex, cross-team engineering initiatives across APIs, streaming infrastructure, data processing, and integrations, translating ambiguous product and business needs into scalable technical solutions.
Design and evolve foundational platform capabilities that enable teams across the company to safely and efficiently build on user-profile data, including subscription lifecycle management and new data-source integrations.
Drive architectural investments that improve the scalability, reliability, data quality, observability, performance, and maintainability of systems processing data at massive scale.
Partner with product, data, and ML teams to shape how user attributes and large-scale data processing capabilities support segmentation, personalization, revenue attribution, behavioral analytics, and machine learning.
Multiply the effectiveness of other engineers through technical mentorship, design reviews, architectural guidance, and engineering standards while remaining hands-on with foundational and technically challenging work.

Your Expertise

8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant experience designing and operating backend or distributed systems at scale.
A track record of technical leadership on complex, multi-team initiatives, taking ambiguous problems from definition through architecture, execution, and successful operation in production.
Deep experience with high-scale data ingestion, processing, and streaming architectures, including systems handling large volumes of user, event, or similarly high-cardinality data.
Strong programming and software-design skills in Java or similar backend languages, combined with strong distributed-systems fundamentals across scalability, reliability, performance, and observability.
Demonstrated ability to make and communicate high-impact architectural decisions, identify systemic technical risks and opportunities, and balance immediate product needs with long-term platform health.
Strong communication, influence, and mentorship skills, with a track record of aligning teams around technical strategy and raising the engineering bar without relying on formal authority.

You'll get competitive perks and benefits, from health & wellness to equity, to help you bring your best self to work.

For US based applicants:

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $180,000 - $230,000 annually + equity + benefits
Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location

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Attentive Company Values Default to Action - Move swiftly and with purpose Be One Unstoppable Team - Rally as each other’s champions Champion the Customer - Our success is defined by our customers' success Act Like an Owner - Take responsibility for Attentive’s success Learn more about AWAKE, Attentive’s collective of employee resource groups. If you do not meet all the requirements listed here, we still encourage you to apply! No job description is perfect, and we may also have another opportunity that closely matches your skills and experience. At Attentive, we know that our Company's strength lies in the diversity of our employees. Attentive is an Equal Opportunity Employer and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Our policy is to provide equal employment opportunities for all employees, applicants and covered individuals regardless of protected characteristics. We prioritize and maintain a fair, inclusive and equitable workplace free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Attentive is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need any assistance or reasonable accommodations, please let your recruiter know.

How we rate this

Staff Software Engineer, Shopper Data Platform at Attentive rates 60 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Staff Software Engineer, Shopper Data Platform is an open job at Attentive.
Level rates this role AI Level 3 of 4: Works on AI.
The listed salary is $180k-$230k a year.
The role is based in United States.
The job was posted on August 14, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by Attentive. Apply on Attentive

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Distributed SystemsData EngineeringSystem ArchitectureMachine learning

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Python AWS LLM Kubernetes TypeScript AI agents

Pay

This job starts at: $180k
Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting starts 8% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where data engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Data Engineering, System Architecture, and Machine learning. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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