Software Development Engineer - Golang

What You'll Do

Avalara operates at global scale, processing millions of tax transactions across thousands of customers in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. To sustain that growth, we must continuously accelerate the reliability, intelligence, and delivery velocity of our core engineering systems — while raising the engineering bar across every team that builds and operates them.

This role exists because the pace and complexity of what we need to build demands engineers who raise the bar: people who strengthen systems, elevate teams, and take full ownership of outcomes — not just tasks. A Senior Software Engineer in this role owns high-impact work at the intersection of distributed systems reliability, AI-enabled product delivery, and engineering excellence across a global organization.

This role elevates Avalara in three ways. For the team, you improve the performance of engineers around you through technical leadership, disciplined code review, mentoring, and a relentless commitment to quality — leaving every system, process, and team stronger than you found it. For the business, you accelerate delivery of reliable, scalable platform capabilities that support Avalara's global research infrastructure, eliminating production risk through proactive design and reducing toil through automation. For customers, you build and ship AI-enabled capabilities that improve automation, data accuracy, and measurable compliance outcomes.

Success in this role is measured by impact, not activity. Within 12 months, you will have delivered a meaningful system reliability improvement — measurable through reduced incident rates, improved SLA adherence, or lower mean time to recovery — and driven at least one AI-enabled product capability that reaches production and generates quantifiable business or customer value. You will have raised the technical capability of peers through mentoring and design leadership, driven at least one significant CI/CD or operational improvement, and established yourself as a trusted architectural voice whose decisions are grounded in data and sound tradeoff reasoning. At Avalara, we hire only Bar Raisers — individuals who improve talent density, execution quality, and business outcomes by their presence. This role is no exception.

This position is also open to people with disabilities (PcD), in accordance with Law No. 8.213/91 (Esta vaga também é destinada a pessoas com deficiência (PcD), conforme Lei nº 8.213/91).

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

• Own the reliability, observability, and performance of scalable distributed systems within Avalara's global research platform — proactively reducing production incidents and strengthening system resilience through architectural discipline, not reactive fixes.
• Drive engineering velocity and quality by applying AI to accelerate how work gets done — including code generation, test automation, system design, debugging, and documentation — with demonstrable, measurable impact on speed and output quality.
• Design and deliver AI-enabled product capabilities that improve automation, data processing efficiency, and customer outcomes, translating applied AI into business value with quantifiable results.
• Lead architectural and technical design decisions for complex distributed systems, balancing scalability, cost, reliability, and long‑term maintainability — communicating tradeoffs clearly and driving alignment across teams.

Bar Raiser Expectations

This role is expected to be an AI Bar Raiser, applying advanced AI capability to meaningfully improve how distributed systems are designed, built, and operated, while elevating the team's ability to use AI to drive measurable engineering and business outcomes.

The Successful Candidate Will:

• Embed AI into engineering workflows to accelerate speed and quality, including code generation, automated testing, debugging, and documentation
• Drive measurable engineering impact using AI, such as reducing incident rates, improving deployment velocity, or shortening mean time to recovery
• Design and deliver AI-enabled product capabilities that translate directly into automation, data accuracy, or customer compliance outcomes, with quantifiable results
• Identify high-leverage AI opportunities tied to business impact, not just convenience or novelty
• Raise the AI capability of the team by sharing patterns, coaching others, and setting the standard for responsible AI use
• Apply strong judgment in AI use, including data handling, governance, and security in production environments

Bar Raiser Expectations

At Avalara, this role is expected to be a Bar Raiser, an engineer who raises the performance of the team by strengthening technical standards, improving execution quality, and leaving every system and process better than they found it.

The Successful Candidate Will:

• Raise the bar for engineers around them through coaching, code review, and technical leadership, measurably improving the output and capability of the team
• Challenge assumptions with data, simplify complexity, and hold themselves and others to a high standard of quality, ownership, and accountability
• Drive meaningful improvement to CI/CD practices and operational workflows, reducing friction and increasing deployment confidence
• Lead architectural and technical decisions on complex distributed systems, owning tradeoffs and driving alignment across teams
• Take full accountability for production reliability, not just the tasks assigned to them

What You’ll Need To Be Successful

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
• 8+ years of experience building, owning, and operating scalable distributed systems at a senior level, with demonstrated accountability for production reliability and engineering outcomes.
• Strong hands‑on proficiency in Golang (nice to have experience with Python and Vue/TypeScript), including designing and operating REST/GraphQL APIs in cloud‑native environments (GCP preferred), with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), CI/CD pipelines, and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Solid command of relational and NoSQL databases and automated testing strategies across the development lifecycle.
• Demonstrated, applied AI expertise with measurable impact on engineering or business outcomes — able to provide specific examples, quantify results (time saved, quality improved, automation scaled), and apply AI responsibly and securely.
• Experience delivering on SaaS or enterprise‑scale platforms, ideally in compliance, financial, or regulated domains, including leading cross‑team technical initiatives.
• Strong English communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across global teams, influence architectural decisions, and drive alignment across disciplines and time zones.
• A track record of raising the bar — improving the performance of teams, systems, and processes through coaching, high standards, and personal ownership — not just meeting expectations.

Avalara is an AI‑first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision‑making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI‑related technologies, ready to thrive here.
• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We’ll Take Care Of You

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness

Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.

Inclusive culture and diversity

Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee‑run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry‑leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.