Explicitly AI-native: daily orchestration of AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) and agent workflows for spec, codegen, tests, and reviews.
About the Role
Senior Backend Engineer II on Life360’s Vertical Experiences team building cloud services for connected devices and high-throughput, low-latency systems. The role emphasizes AI-native engineering—orchestrating AI agents for spec, code generation, testing, and reviews—while shipping device-driven features to millions of users.
Job Description
Role
Senior Backend Engineer II on the Vertical Experiences (Devices Cloud) team. Build and operate cloud services that power connected devices, translating device signals into reliable, scalable backend systems supporting device state, telemetry ingest, health monitoring, and command/control.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain backend services for device connectivity, telemetry ingestion, health monitoring, and command/control operations.
- Define APIs and workflows in collaboration with firmware, mobile, and product teams.
- Deliver scalable, resilient microservices running on AWS (EKS, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, etc.).
- Build and own data pipelines for high-throughput streams (e.g., Kafka or similar).
- Instrument services for observability, reliability, and SLO compliance.
- Participate in on-call rotations and live incident response.
- Write clean, testable, performant code and improve CI/CD and automation.
- Orchestrate AI coding agents daily for spec writing, code generation, test authoring, incident triage, PR review, and system design.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years experience building backend services using Java, Go, Python, or similar languages.
- Experience with microservices architecture, RESTful API design, and distributed systems.
- Strong skills with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), container orchestration, and deployments.
- Experience with databases (relational and/or NoSQL), caching layers, and event/streaming systems.
- Comfortable collaborating across teams and articulating technical tradeoffs.
- Hands‑on agentic AI workflow experience.
Nice-to-Have
- Experience with IoT or telematics systems.
- Familiarity with Kafka, Kinesis, or other streaming platforms.
- Experience with high-frequency ingest systems and time‑series data.
- Background with observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
- Knowledge of SRE practices and automated testing frameworks.
- Daily use of AI coding assistants (the team supports Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot) for substantive developer tasks.
- Treat AI-generated code with the same ownership and review standards as any PR.
- Drive velocity through effective AI usage, share prompting strategies, and continuously learn and adapt tooling.
Compensation & Equity
- US base salary range stated: $148,000 to $216,000 USD.
- Canada base salary range stated: $171,500 to $201,000 CAD.
- Total compensation includes equity (RSUs) and other benefits.
- Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance (100% paid for US employees) and supplemental plans for Canadian employees.
- Paid parental leave.
- 401(k) with company matching (US) and RRSP with DPSP (Canada).
- Mental Wellness Program & EAP.
- Flexible PTO and 12 company-wide days off.
- Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for remote work.
- Free Life360 Platinum Membership and free Tile products.
Skills
System Design Distributed Systems Microservices API Design Cloud Infrastructure Container Orchestration Scalability Performance Optimization Observability SRE Practices Incident Response / On-call CI/CD and Automation Data Pipelines / Streaming Testing and Test Authoring Cross-team Collaboration Technical Communication AI-native / Agentic AI Workflows Continuous Learning
Experience Level
Senior
USD 148,000 - 216,000/year
Employment Type
Full-Time
- Remote-first (roles can be performed remotely within US and Canada)
- Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance (100% paid for US employees)
- Paid parental leave
- 401(k) with company matching (US)
- RRSP with DPSP (Canada)
- Mental Wellness Program & EAPFlexible PTO and 12 company-wide days off
- Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for remote work